The Supporters Trust board is hugely disappointed by the conduct of club chairman Kelvin Thomas at the club’s open forum on September 22.
It appears his clear intention is to drive a chasm between fans and bring down the Supporters Trust for consistently asking questions about the future viability of our football club.
We naturally regret the breakdown in the relationship between Trust and football club but it was never our intention and the relationship hasn’t just broken down over the ACV bid. It has effectively been broken for more than three years.
Between 2019 and the present, the chairman and the club’s executive have apparently sought to undermine and discredit the Trust, and split the fan base, at every turn.
Since January 2019 the club has:-
· Secretly recorded a private meeting without our permission and then subsequently broken off relations, accusing us of a ‘negative narrative’ (2019)
· Snubbed Trust representatives when we were match sponsors, failing to deliver on several elements of the sponsorship which had been provided as standard to every other match sponsor (2020)
· Turned down an offer of face mask sales, on the grounds of health and safety, which would have benefited the Community Trust. Another local health charity had no problem accepting donations from these sales (2020)
· Failed to adequately honour a £3,000 sponsorship deal for the Women’s team and then sought to impose new and unacceptable conditions when we looked to renew the deal the following season (2020)
· Accused the Supporters Trust of branding club staff ‘unprofessional’, with the chief executive calling staff to a meeting before releasing an open letter.
To put this in context, what we actually said – in response to a question about fan ownership – was that should the Trust ever be in control of the club, we would not run it and that professionals would run it.
Somehow that translated into the Trust saying the current staff was not professional. That was not and still is not our view (2021)
· Leaked private correspondence into the public domain through a third party without due regard for an individual’s personal details being published. (2021)
· Blocked the Trust from buying a £650 table at the club’s 125 anniversary celebration and did not invite Trust board member Ian Atkins, who is the club’s most successful manager of the modern era (2022)
· Helped to derail the Trust’s significant income-producing plan for the ACV land at Sixfields, the club chairman ringing the chief executive of our joint venture partner company to warn him off dealing with the Trust.
The chairman also stated our partners were unaware of the leasehold situation on the ACV land until the third meeting. Completely untrue. This was made clear to our partners at the first meeting (2022)
· Prepared and delivered a broadside on the Trust at an open forum that they expected Trust board members to attend. The board members were then criticised for non-attendance and for not asking questions in person. Questions which have been repeatedly asked in person, and in writing, and which to this date have still not received satisfactory answers (2022)
· Suggested at the open meeting that dissenting fans should question the conduct of the Trust’s board.
No matter what the differences may be, one would hope not to see the chairman of an EFL football club behave in this way.
A few weeks later, a petition seeking the resignation of the Trust board has been brought forward anonymously yet calling for more transparency from the Trust.
Seemingly by someone living in the United States who has admitted on a forum that he knows people at the club and has done work for the club (2022)
The Open Forum allegations fact checked with context…
The Trust has lied to West Northamptonshire Council…
A very serious allegation and completely untrue. We have not lied to the council, or to anyone else for that matter.
We have taken great care to ensure that all releases and statements we have made are accurate, to the point that the dry and technical nature of our communications have often not been easy to understand and we have been criticised for this. We acknowledge that but we feel it is important we get our facts right.
The Trust told the council in 2018 that they were willing to take on the club for £1…
That is true, we did. But, once again, the standalone comment without any context gives rise to misinformation and we have had to remind the club about this on more than one occasion.
In May 2018 – with the relationship between the club and the council at breaking point – the chairman announced he was so frustrated that he felt he had no other option than put the club up for sale. This was reported in the local media www.bbc.com/sport/football/ 44223738
It was a worrying time. In the months that followed, two things happened. Firstly, a senior member of staff at NTFC contacted a Trust board member concerned that some bills were not being paid. This set alarm bells ringing. Secondly, another person close to the club contacted a separate Trust board member to say that they had heard on good authority that the cheque book would close for good in October that year.
In light of these unsettling reports, the Trust directly raised questions and concerns with the then Northampton Borough Council as to where it would leave the club and the associated land issues if those reports were true. We also asked how we could support the club if a crisis developed, as we are sure fans would expect us to do.
They have accused the council of corruption…
False. At no point has the Supporters Trust ever accused West Northamptonshire Council of corruption.
The club will complete the stand…
The provisional contract states that NTFC will complete the stand within five years and that a failure to do so would allow WNC to buy back the old athletics track land behind the East Stand for £1.
But here is the big difference. It is CDNL – a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTFC but a separate company – that is seeking the deal with WNC.
Both are under the control of David Bower and Kelvin Thomas. So there is nothing to stop CDNL doing a deal with WNC, selling the land, the owners using the profits to clear NTFC debt and then selling the club, leaving the club to pick up the tab for the stand completion further down the line.
This is an enabling deal. It should be down to CDNL to complete the stand but in the provisional contract it says NTFC.
We would welcome a final contract guarantee that CDNL will complete the stand from the money they make on the deal.
History continues to show us that, legally, non-binding assurances are worthless, no matter how much supporters may hope they are true.
Openness and transparency…
The Supporters Trust is open and transparent – members are regularly updated on Trust matters and are welcome to attend monthly board meetings.
We are the only supporter body at Northampton Town FC whose board members are democratically-elected.
However, in respect of the bid to buy the land at Sixfields, we are presently bound by commercial confidentiality. We will be able to say more about our backer and our plans if the bid is accepted by WNC.
We have reassured members there is no risk or liability upon them as a result of this bid.
It simply protects the old athletics track land as a club asset, which is what we always set out to do when we embarked on the ACV process. There was no challenge from any quarter when we registered the ACV in 2019.
The Trust is delaying the building of the stand…
To claim that the bid for the ACV land means that the Trust is now responsible for delaying the completion of the stand is fatuous, given that the stand has remained half built since day one of the present ownership.
£4 million for the East Stand and other investment…
It is correct that the words ‘ring fenced’ were not specifically used in a radio interview about the new owners’ intentions when they took over the club in 2015. But listening back to the interview www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/ football/34938496 the clear impression is that this money had been set aside for completing the stand.
And it was certainly the clear impression that the old Northampton Borough Council had when they made the decision to sell to the present owners rather than to other interested parties.
We have invested more than £4 million anyway…
Yes, the owners have put more than £4 million into NTFC since 2015. But it isn’t an investment per se as it has been loaded as debt on the club, money they want back. There has been minimal investment benefit in the club under their ownership and the club’s asset base remains low, all the more surprising when the owners made £6.68 million from the 100 per cent sale of the club to Chinese media company 5U Sports in 2017 and didn’t tell anyone.
Moving the goalposts…
The chairman says that details of the deal have been fairly communicated to fans by both the club and council – in meetings, in correspondence and in council minutes.
What he failed to say is that between February 21 and 8 March this year – from the Guildhall public meeting to WNC’s cabinet decision approving the deal – the goalposts moved significantly.
The original deal, supported by the Trust at the public meeting, would see CDNL buy the Sixfields land for £890,000 once they had completed the East Stand.
Council leader Jonathan Nunn had always said that the stand would come first:- www.westnorthants.gov.uk/news/ conditional-offer-sixfields- land-passes-rigorous-analysis
But a bidding war for land resulted in CDNL upping their offer to £2.05 million for the land.
What no-one was told proactively was that, as part of the new offer, there was no longer a requirement for the stand to be completed before anything else happened.
So it is no longer ‘stand then land’. The club now sell it as ‘stand and land’. Our fear is an outcome of ‘land then no stand’.
The Trust wants fan ownership…
The Trust clearly wants supporters to play a bigger role in the football clubs they support. This has been the case since 1992 and is a given.
But not once have we said we want fan ownership at Northampton Town and again our words have been taken out of context.
Given the club’s recent and well-documented vexed history with regard to its ownership, its assets and its finances, we felt it made complete sense to explore a future ‘rainy day’ community ownership model which would be a good fit for the Cobblers.
To that end, we held a thought-provoking public meeting in Northampton in 2019. Much of the content of a blueprint discussion document produced at that meeting – ridiculed by the club at the time – has actually now been embraced by the club.
The bottom line is that we want greater supporter involvement in a progressive and ambitious club that is well looked after by its owner, be that ownership private, hybrid or community based.
This is our position.
KEY
WNC – West Northamptonshire Council, who are looking to sell the freehold of 22 acres to the north and east of Sixfields stadium
NTFC – Northampton Town Football Club. Owned by David Bower, chairman Kelvin Thomas
CDNL – County Developments (Northampton) Ltd, owned by NTFC and controlled by CDNL’s two directors, David Bower and Kelvin Thomas. Seeking the deal with WNC.
