This regular feature is intended to provide a summary of the Trust's activity in two main areas; firstly, in helping to ensure all parties within the club are pulling together, and, secondly, in helping to bring the Club closer to our local community. These two areas coincide quite a lot, with the GPLZ and Community Sports Trust already highly valued by those with whom they come into contact. However, all of us at BFC believe that the success of these individual organisations, and others such as Lifeline and BIAS, and thus the success of the club as a whole, can only be enhanced by more cooperation and greater collaboration with each other. With the planning process for the new stadium getting underway, BU also want to play their part in ensuring all interested parties, including supporters and local residents and businesses, feel included in that process. We hope to keep you up to date on that issue here too. And, finally, we will also cover events within our own community of Supporter Trusts from other clubs and from Supporters Direct, the association to which we all belong.
This has already been a fairly busy month on all fronts.
No update of this period can start without mentioning the walk to Stockport. Full marks to all 4 walkers, Natasha, Claire, Chris and Pedro(Peter) and their support team and a huge vote of thanks from BU for this tremendous fund raising enterprise. It was great to see their efforts officially acknowledged at the Big Red Ball, expertly compered by auctioneer and MC Peter Gilham and hugely enjoyed by all. Great to see Moses and Sam at the event and thanks are due to both Lifeline and Thorne in the Side for our first two signings for next season.
On 30 April, BU (Donald Kerr) attended the first meeting of the Lionel Road Liaison Group, along with BIAS (Phil Marchant). Luke Kirton also attended representing the Lionel Rd Consultation Group. Others present included local residents associations, Brentford Chamber of Commerce, local councillors, Barratts, Assael (project architects) and Four Communications who are managing the consultation process for Barratts. Brian Burgess presented the club's vision for a new community stadium and Peter Murphy from Barratts took the meeting through a broad outline of the timetable and scale of the project. This will be a monthly meeting and a regular opportunity to discuss issues raised by any of the parties involved. Any individual concerns which supporters may have can be channelled to this group through Donald Kerr (BU), Luke Kirton, or Phil Marchant (BIAS) and we will post regular updates of the meetings.
On 12 May, BU (Donald) had one of his regular catch up meetings with David Heath, BFC Chief Executive. These meetings ensure that BFC & BU are working closely together to make the most of their contacts with the supporters and local community. One of the key objectives for the close season is to raise awareness of the special ticket offers being made to families for next season and also to give greater publicity to the great value £60 season ticket for under 16's. Matt Davis, the clubs commercial manager, joined the discussion of how we could best make use of the very limited funds available to achieve these aims. .
This was followed in the early evening by a meeting convened by the BU Supporters' Representative, Jon Gosling, Mark Atkinson & Tony Cross from BIAS, and David Heath to review the Customer Charter. This was to ensure that the charter remains accurate and fair in its commitments to supporters for the coming season. A number of small changes were made to the document. It is available on the club's website.
The BU Board meeting followed immediately after this review and the minutes of that are covered separately.
On Tuesday 13 May, BU (Donald Kerr & Brian Burgess) attended the AGM of the Brentford Chamber of Commerce. A large attendance was assured by holding this meeting at Fuller's Brewery and including a tour of the brewery as a prelude to the business of the evening.
In his speech to the meeting, the outgoing President, Tim Luckett, referred to the new stadium for Brentford FC at Lionel Rd, and, given the much higher profile it would give the local area, and the potential for business it represented, asked all of those attending to give it their wholehearted support. In the discussion afterwards, we were both very pleased by the very positive response to the stadium plans, and we were commended for engaging with local businesses as early in the process. Donald accepted an invitation to serve on the executive council of the chamber of commerce, ensuring that we are able to keep abreast of business activity in Brentford, to keep the chamber up to date with development at BFC, and to contribute as a business in our own right in that community.
The October meeting of the Chamber will be hosted at Griffin Park when we hope to be able to provide a more detailed outline of the stadium plans.
The Stadium Project
Donald Kerr and Mark Chapman represent the BU board on the Lionel Rd Consultation Group, which this month issued the survey into supporters' views of the new stadium, and what they would like to see included in the new design. We received 400 replies which is a fantastic response and demonstrates the level of interest in the stadium. Any of our spare time has been spent analysing and summarising all of those 400 answers. The group have been hugely grateful for the expertise and assistance of Edmund Paton-Walsh in this process, without which it would not have been possible to meet our deadline of reporting back by the end of the month. More of that next week.