Despite an £8m shortfall in funding for the next three years from 2012/13, the Plymouth City Council cabinet have agreed to buy Home Park as part of a deal with James Brent’s Akkeron Group to buy Plymouth Argyle Football Club. The decision still needs to be approved by the full council!
The council will pay £1.6m for the land that Home Park sits on and the club will pay £135,000 per annum to rent the land back from the council, at that rate of rental, it will take almost 12 years to pay back the public money used to purchase the land. Rent will raise by 150% (£337,000) should Argyle manage to gain promotion to the Championship and quadruple (£540,000) should the club reach the Premier League! The club will also have the option to buy back the land every five years at 12 times the £135,000 rent, which would be £1,620,000, just £20k more than it was bought for. But I wonder if it is 12 times the rent paid, for example, in five years time, should Argyle return to the Championship, would the buyback price be over £4m or will it remain at £1.6m?
As much as I want my home town club survive; we also have to take into account what services will have to be sacrificed to pay the £1.6m fee for Home Park? The council already have a shortfall of £8m from 2012/13 as funding from central government decreases, for 2012/13, the deficit will be almost £10m, that doesn’t seem like a very practical way to manage a city’s budget does it?
It’s all well and good people like Neil Warnock and James Brent wanting the council to buy Home Park, but they are not the people that will suffer from the cutbacks in services, what will it be; services for the elderly or a council tax hike to punish the poorest in the community, or both?
Update [18/10/2011 @ 13:25]: According to the official statement from Plymouth City Council, the buyback price will be 12 times the rent paid at the time of buyback. The rent will increase at 150% should the club gain promotion to the Championship and 300% should a miracle happen and Argyle gain promotion to the Premier League, if the promotion door isn’t slammed shut as suggested by the top foreign owned clubs in the league, but that’s a different annoyance.