Kersal resident and Salford councillor, Howard Balkind, has slated the low level of rent being paid to cash-strapped Salford City Council by the new owners of Salford City FC - Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim.
A Freedom of Information response has revealed that a new lease for the club's Moor Lane ground has recently been `re-assigned' from Salford City Football Club to a company called Powerscale Limited, of which Gary Neville is the sole officer*. The annual rental income to the Council from the ground was given as £1,400, which is around £27 a week.**
"I think it's absolutely diabolical and I do not think they should be given a peppercorn rent" says Howard Balkind "As far as I'm concerned the Clowes family gave that piece of ground for community use but as a far as I know it's now being run as a business and the leaseholders of the ground are not allowing community use.
"They say they want it to be community based but my personal view is that they have no intention of letting the community use the ground or facilities without having to pay" he explains "No-one has been allowed use it for about two years and it would appear that Salford City are speaking with forked tongue.
"The whole idea was that it was a community club, people volunteered and people cared because it was a community club" he adds "But they have turned it into a business. I have written to the Council's chief executive and am awaiting more information."
The councillor's tirade against Gary Neville et al comes in the midst of a battle between members of the local community and Salford City's owners over plans to redevelop the stadium and increase its capacity from just over 2,000 to just over 5,000.
This week, many local people met to form the Kersal Moor Residents Association to oppose the plans, which the club itself states will generate over one thousand extra cars arriving in the area.
At the meeting it was stressed that any objections raised were not against the club itself but its expansion proposals and lack of consultation with the community. Residents told of fans using the protected Kersal Moor as a toilet, throwing litter in their gardens and abusing them, while instances of fire engines and ambulances being blocked were also aired.***
They argued that such problems exist before the increased capacity and that the club has no concrete plans to alleviate them with a further 3,000 people entering the area for big games.
Over 250 objections to the club's planning application have been lodged by local residents and Councillor Balkind is backing them. The proposals are expected to be discussed by Salford City Council planning panel on December 15th.
For a full background on Salford City's redevelopment of the Moor Lane stadium see previous Salford Star articles – click here and click here
*Powerscale Ltd, in turn, has 75% or more of its shares held `directly or indirectly' by Salford City Football Club – which, in turn, has its shares held by Project '92 Ltd which has net current assets of £1.8million, according to latest accounts published this week. Project 92, the Star revealed last year, has, in turn, fifty per cent of its shares owned by Peter Lim's Incanto Investments Limited, registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands (see here).
** The Salford Star understands that Salford Council are justifying this by saying that it only rents the land itself to the club, not the structures on it, so it's not entitled to charge rent on them.
***Residents also say that the club has actually started work on the redevelopment, before planning permission has been granted, and that the contractor had told them they were pile driving to put in the columns to support the new stands. The Salford Star emailed Zerum, which has applied for planning permission on behalf of the club, for a comment but received no response.
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