Blaming the ref shows how weak Ashton Gate plan was

Doomed?: Plan A may no longer be an option — it is time for some overpaid professionals to start to perform by finding Plan B

By Tony Dyer

After two defeats and four red cards, supporters of a giant supermarket at Ashton Gate now appear to have decided that the fault lies with the referee rather than accept that their entire game plan was, and is, fundamentally flawed.

The previous proposal for a Tesco superstore was recommended for refusal by planning officers leading to a hasty withdrawal of the application. One of the key reasons for that refusal was that the developers were unable to prove any need for a large increase in retail in the area.

For the latest Sainsbury’s proposal, despite a change in planning law that meant that the applicants no longer had to demonstrate a need for the store, a decision to largely ignore the findings of the Council’s own independent retail study, the questionable decision to treat the new store as if it was an extension thus allowing lower traffic estimations, the acceptance of retail figures that were at the highly optimistic end of the scale, and the total disregard of sustainability reports showing that major supermarkets had a negative net impact on local jobs and the local economy – this still left enough holes in the planning report for the objectors to drive a bendy-bus through.

Unable to deconstruct the evidence based objections raised by local residents supporters of the new superstore have had to resort to that familiar last resort of many disappointed losers — blaming the officials.

As a result the four councillors, including the planning committee chairman, who voted against the proposal for the largest superstore in the South West being built on the Ashton Gate site are now being subjected to the sort of abuse in the local newspaper normally heaped on players and managers on the sports pages of the nationals following yet another disastrous England World Cup campaign — the difference being that the councillors actually delivered the high quality performance expected of them despite operating in a pressurised environment unlike England’s finest highly paid footballers.

In the same way that players who were lauded as some of the most talented footballers from the best league in the world were a few weeks later pilloried as useless and overpaid — so we now find that the same councillors who were applauded for their decision to award planning permission for the new stadium are now castigated because their decision is not to the liking of those who think a giant car-hungry retail shed in somebody else’s vibrant community is a small price to pay for the opportunity to follow their hobby in more salubrious surroundings.

It remains to be seen if the club decide to throw yet more money – money that they keep telling us they haven’t got – at yet another attempt to impose something that has never been demonstrated as needed or wanted by the local community or whether they will finally realise that it is time to develop a degree of humility and realise that they really do need to sit down and talk with the local community properly rather than talk at them through a consultation exercise that offers no real substantial options.

As it stands, results from elsewhere in the next few days may see the club left with nothing to show for all their efforts – efforts that have seen the club record some of its largest financial losses ever posted. The football club now finds itself reliant on favourable results from the Town Green inspector as well as from Sainsbury’s management team. If either the Town Green decision goes against the club or if Sainsbury’s decide that seeing a precedent set for refusing retail development at Ashton Gate is a fair enough return on their investment so far and see no need to go any further, the club may find itself at the end of the road for constructing a new stadium at Ashton Vale.

So far, the football club and its development partners have spent considerable sums bringing in highly paid talent that they hoped would dazzle their opponents with their skill and expertise only to find that the other side with its home-grown unpaid talent has managed to produce a team that has out-thought and out-played their supposedly more illustrious professional opponents.

The result was a defeat that was so unexpected by the club and its supporters that, apparently confident of victory, didn’t feel it was worth turning up — leading to an uncomfortable Hartlepool-away type experience at the planning meeting for those who did make the journey to support their club.

Surely it is now time for those who run the club to realise that any future plan that continues to be based on a giant supermarket at Ashton Gate is likely to lead to further painful losses. A new tactic is needed and perhaps it is time to look outside the club for ideas on how to move forward.

The latest financial figures would appear to put Bristol City’s funding gap from Ashton Gate without a giant supermarket but with a mixed-used development somewhere in the range of £8m-£13m depending on which set of figures you use (the latest BCC cabinet meeting appeared to value the Ashton Gate site even as retail at only £13m which if true would mean the funding gap could be as low as £1m!).

The club could either choose to see this £8m-13m gap as a glass half-empty compared to realising the full £23m projected in the Sainsbury’s planning report from selling the land as retail, or they can see it as a glass half-full compared to the zero funding resulting from not getting planning permission for any development at all which seems ever more likely for a supermarket proposal.

The problem is that the club have only tried Plan A (the supermarket) and continue to insist that this is the only plan available to them despite the fact that Plan A has led them to repeated defeat. They need to find some sort of a Plan B which might have to involve facing up to a reduced return directly from Ashton Gate and the reduction of the remaining funding gap by other more creative means. But they must find it quickly because the clock is ticking and time is running out for them. If December 2 comes and England is not awarded the World Cup, a lot of the support from beyond the football club may dissipate.

Plan A may no longer be an option — it is time for some overpaid professionals to start to perform by finding Plan B.