Relocation Update

Clyde FC Community Foundation has, this week, been informed that the site for which it had a live application has been withdrawn from the People Make Glasgow Communities process by Glasgow City Council and therefore is no longer available for community or third sector ownership.

In January of this year, the Foundation’s Relocation Sub-Committee met with council officials in George Square to discuss future options in the aftermath of our bid for Crownpoint having not progressed. At that meeting, we were directed to Haghill by officials as one of the Council’s preferred options from a list of over half a dozen potential sites. After considerable preparatory work, a formal application to begin the transfer process was submitted by the Foundation in late May. By mid-July, our status as sole applicants for the site was confirmed by the People Make Glasgow Communities team at GCC and although there remained a question mark over a small section of additional land which would be required to be deemed “in scope” to make the project viable, we remained confident that the project would be given the go-ahead and were given continued encouragement from GCC that this would be the case.

Since our announcement just over two months ago, we have been waiting for confirmation that the additional land could be added to our initial application by being deemed “in scope” by GCC’s Education Services department. During these intervening months, we had begun, in earnest, to engage with the local community and their elected representatives as preparation for the next stage of the asset transfer process. Initial engagement with Haghill Park Primary School and Parkhill Secondary School suggested that a facility such as being proposed would be transformative for their ability to provide access to sport for the young people at the schools. GCC further suggested that the Foundation look at taking the lease on a further sports hub within Alexandra Park, in addition to the facilities included in the application.

Instead of receiving the anticipated confirmation that we could progress formally to the next stage, we have been informed of the council’s eleventh hour decision to retain ownership of the entire site which had previously been approved, with no explanation being given for this U-turn other than “to support other Council priorities, which for present time must remain confidential”.

To say that this is frustrating would be a vast understatement. We have now been engaged with Glasgow City Council’s asset transfer process for two and a half years, and a significant amount of the charity’s resources, both financial and manpower, have been invested in securing a site which meets the needs of the charity and of the football club. This could have been achieved at either Crownpoint or at Haghill, yet both sites have been reclassified at a late stage and the current position is that neither will pass to community or third sector ownership. In both cases, we firmly believe that it is not just the charity and the football club which have missed out, but also the local communities who were overwhelmingly receptive to the benefits that the Community Foundation could bring to their neighbourhoods.

Inevitably, this development is a serious setback to the relocation project. But the fundamental proposition remains the same. There is much we need to re-evaluate given our experiences over the past two years, but we cannot operate a sustainable business model unless we have autonomy at a stadium of our own, so the search must continue. This statement has been released quickly to inform our support of the latest developments and, as such, there is less we can say at present about where we go from here. We would hope to have a further update issued within the next couple of weeks.