The majority of Calderdale tax payers don't want a community owned stadium, it's a waste of their taxes to have 2 teams that frankly no one gives a about except the 2000 or so fans of each club. As a tax payer I wouldn't want another penny spending on the place and I would bet that if the residents of Calderdale were asked to vote it would be hugely in favour of getting rid. As a rugby fan I wouldn't want it in council ownership whilst they allow it to deteriorate into nothing more than a quagmire.

Where have you and others been for the rest of the things that the Council has sold off, from Housing to Playing fields? Its clear the Council have major money problems and cant afford to properly keep the Shay in good nick or sort problems out like proper drainage, repair damage to the stands, finish off building work etc. So for me the Council has to look at what is important and what is not. The Shay is used by sadly less than 1% of the Calderdale population. Can it justify spending money it doesnt have on The Shay at the neglect of services to the Old and disabled or other areas like Schools?
The Council has to look at what areas it can best serve the public with- Some things are more important than others. If The Shay is simply costing too much, then the Council must look either bring more money in from its use or to sell it off. This may mean short term losing money on its sale. This has happened in other things it has sold. Long term it would free money that it would be sinking into the Shay for the benefit of 2 Professional Sports Clubs. The Shay is likely going to cost the Council hundreds of thousands if not millions in the next 10 years with things like repairs, sorting the pitch out as right now the current solution is not good enough etc. The Council for me has to look at if it can or will be prepared to do that or not.


The current owners also cant prove they have the resources and finance in place to fund the ground in the future. That doesnt mean Mr Abbott or whoever is the right person neither. I also feel, that should the Ground be sold, then there has to be something that guarentees both clubs playing future at The Shay. But any sale also has to include a certain amountof improvements at the Shay including proper drainage. Also that both clubs pay the same amount.

One point about the club finances that all you doom mongers seem to forget, if we are so short of money why does Halicat look so well fed?

Lighten up everyone, it's in hand, in very good hands.

Is the interest being paid on the 3 million loan included in the 50k a year loss or not. If it is included then the shay is not looking money it is the interest on the loan that is loosing money. If it is not included then the shay is loosing more than 50k a year. What ever way you look at it selling the shay for 2 million saves money in the long term. If the interest is included in the 50k then selling for 2 million reduces the interest by 2/3 (17k) if the interest is not included then they would save themselves 50k + 2/3 interest payments. And all future repairs / up keep.

These are all rough calculations as I do not know the true figures.
If it was me I know what I would do.

Sell it to a big property developer or supermarket for 4 million and make some money .

Then may be you would say, "if only we had not been so hasty judging Tony where are we going to play football now"?

On a serious note the 2 million offer would help the council balance the books better I would say.

The rugby club would be ok, I'd move up the road to the Klondike and get a gold mine build a stadium in Nnrth America move the team to the stadium and call it expanding the game.

I would be the new saviour of rugby league.

Part Quote.
"Is the interest being paid on the 3 million loan included in the 50k a year loss or not. If it is included then the shay is not looking money it is the interest on the loan that is loosing money. If it is not included then the shay is loosing more than 50k a year. What ever way you look at it selling the shay for 2 million saves money in the long term. If the interest is included in the 50k then selling for 2 million reduces the interest by 2/3 (17k) if the interest is not included then they would save themselves 50k + 2/3 interest payments. And all future repairs / up keep."

That's exactly why I asked but I wanted them to answer the question.
It's not only the interest on the loan but the loan itself and the interest that need to be taken into consideration as loss or debt.

Maybe the FOI boys could send one in to find out how much is left owing on the loan and what the annual payments are and if the results fit their agenda no doubt they will be published everywhere, if they don't nothing will be said.

A good rent model is how they do Huddersfield, the Football and Rugby clubs pay a set amount per person through the gates at each game.

Hudds Town pay more rent, as they play more games, and are better supported than the Giants. But on a break down neither pays more than the other for what use they get.

That sounds reasonable to me, Brew. What does our new friend Danger Mouse think about that?

Halicat got him

Faxcar:

All the speculation previously mentioned for not paying the rent or on how much the Shay was losing and how accurate or what worth any of it is.

But I wasn’t speculating. My losses figure is the result of an FOI, the person speculating on the losses was the person trying to justify his bid for the ground.

The point is clear CMBC were never close, there was no deal according to him and of course he couldn't be wrong, he had to really mean something else.

What are you arguing about here? Reactiv did make a bid to buy the ground. The fact that is was so short and lacking in detail is immaterial, that bid was still on the table and CMBC had to consider it.

Are you not both a rate payer and football fan, how do you seperate them both because there is a conflict of interests between the two.

Because everyone has to separate them both. Someone who enjoys reading may have a conflict of interest over council tax because they want the libraries to have 30 copies of each book so they don’t have to wait to borrow it. Life is full of conflicts of interest. I’m not expecting the council to provide me with a 70,000 seater stadium with a TV replay scoreboard which I may do if I only existed as a football fan. We don’t all walk around with hats on that tell us we can only have an opinion on one thing at any one time.

How is it a valuable assett when it is losing tens of thousands of pounds per year as it stands, unfinished with no money to spend on it and the inevitable decay that will follow, sounds more like a liabilty to me.

As a rate (tax) payer how do you feel about all the other rate payers of calderdale of around 110,000 people losing your figure of £50,000 per year for the 1500 football fans which isn't even 1.5% of the population meaning 98.5% don't count or don't have the same rate payers rights.

Reactiv obviously think it has potential as they believe it could make a profit without either club paying rent. So, if you believe that then what is to stop the council achieving that whilst keeping the profits and investing them in other services? If you don’t believe that’s possible then ask yourselves why Reactiv are so keen to buy it.

As a football fan you have your wish, but since it's a community assett it should not be one fan or 1500 fans decision.
As a rate payer you do not have your wish because it's losing rate payers money for a very small minority.

You’re absolutely right. That is why the bid should have been made in the open and fully disclosed, so that the people of Calderdale, with their many hats on, could decide what is the best for the future of the district and the tax payers. It was the secrecy surrounding the bid, on all sides, that have caused so much concern. And, if you want a response from me with each hat, then as a football fan I don’t trust Reactiv to be custodians of the stadium without proving they can do all the work without securing a debt on the ground, and as a rate payer I’d want CMBC to put it on the open market so we could see how much the maximum someone would pay (with the caveat of use as a sports stadium), rather than the council accepting the first speculative bid they receive.

Where do you get the £50,000 loss figure from, the FOI?

According to FOI 289 the forecasted loss for 2013/14 is £58,286

What did the figure in the FOI include in it's loss count?

Debits were employees, transport, premises and supplies. The interest to service the loan to rebuild the East Stand isn’t included.

Maybe the FOI boys could send one in to find out how much is left owing on the loan and what the annual payments are and if the results fit their agenda no doubt they will be published everywhere, if they don't nothing will be said.

No need for most of it, at a council meeting on 26.09.2013 Cllr Malcolm James asked, the answer is a public record:
The cost of the capital scheme at the Shay was £5.8m. £3.588m of that was undertaken by prudential borrowing. Of this, £3.157m was outstanding a 31st March 2013. The borrowing commenced in 2009/10 and was taken over a 25 year period.
I also find your comment a touch disrespectful. All my FOIs have been asked through What Do They Know, a public Web site where anyone can check the responses, whether or not they ‘fit my agenda’.

I don't have a problem with a fair rent for each club. However, I assume that as your directors are businessmen then they wouldn't have signed a contract they thought was unfair, so by definition isn't the current agreement fair?

Who knows? Maybe they haven't signed a new agreement because they weren't happy with the terms and they are still haggling over it. Granted, it is a long time to be trying to reach an agreement but I genuinely believe that there is more to this than meets the eye as, if it was just a simple matter of Fax not paying the rent, I think CMBC would have taken some form of action by now, either to recover the money or by at least denying Fax any further use of the stadium.

I always class fair as being even handed/consistent, so if each tenant pays the same rate per game assuming same number of stands are open then it would be fair.

If the landlord rents out any different to the above then it is unfair, especially if the disparity is due to previous financial incompetence which left the UK taxpayers £800k out of pocket