Darlo Uncovered

We all know the sorry saga of Feethams but what happened to the money from the land sale?

As far as I was aware, the covenant on Feethams, stating it had to be used 'for sporting purposes' was transferred to the land the Arena now sits on which allowed the sale of the old football ground. This was overseen by the trustees (members of DCC, DBC and I think, the towns MP) and the money raised by the sale (several millions) was placed in a trust to be used by the people of Darlington 'for sporting purposes', as per the terms of the original covenant.

Does anybody know if that money is available as loans / grants etc that we could potentially tap into for upgrades to BM?

The cricket club have the money.
End of discussion.

I don't think the covenant was transferred from one ground to another.

As part of the purchase the developers needed to pay £250k into a 106 fund which was to be used to pay for extra play areas around the town, in return for using the land for housing.

It seems to be that local councils are responsible for managing and allocating those funds.

Here's how another council does it - I couldn't quickly find anything similar being run by DBC, but I'm in no way pointing a finger there... I only searched for about 10 seconds.

https://www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk/article ... grant-fund

The information at the above link is useful in that it gives you an idea about what kind of schemes are eligible and which aren't. I think it's generally aimed at funding projects which serve public communities.

It may be that some of that money was already used in relation to the development of BM?

BUSHEAD wrote:The cricket club have the money.
End of discussion.

I clearly remember reading a (DCC Chairman) Brian Johnson quote in the Echo where he made a kind of "Yeahhh... SURE I will" promise to consider investing part of the money raised from the land sale into community projects, but it was never going to be invested in anything which didn't provide some sort of benefit to strengthening the support for cricket in the town...

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/1 ... le/?ref=mr

Fully agree - end of discussion regarding the cricket club.

There was a condition in the Arena planning permission about having to play professional football there, but like other conditions (e.g. Statue/Bus coordinator) the paperwork disappeared from the insecure planning paper archive. There was no mention of any link to the Feethams shennanigans.

Q8Quaker wrote:Does anybody know if that money is available as loans / grants etc that we could potentially tap into for upgrades to BM?

Shaun Campbell is the man to ask about this. He was at the last evening home game, if you see him - ask him, he is amiable.

I always wondered why no action was ever taken against the cricket club in regard to the covenant.

Neil Johnson wrote:There was a condition in the Arena planning permission about having to play professional football there

Neil that sounds like a very poor rumour. You cannot mandate a level of football to be played on a piece of land - what if the incumbent club were naturally relegated below professional level.

Beano wrote:I always wondered why no action was ever taken against the cricket club in regard to the covenant.

Probably because Johnson has it all sown up and watertight in the cricket clubs favour now. Any challenge should have been years ago.
There will have been a meeting and if no objections were raised then he would have had free reign to reword the trust documents.

Rugby football?!

It's all water under Polam Lane bridge now.

loan_star wrote:

Beano wrote:I always wondered why no action was ever taken against the cricket club in regard to the covenant.

Probably because Johnson has it all sown up and watertight in the cricket clubs favour now. Any challenge should have been years ago.
There will have been a meeting and if no objections were raised then he would have had free reign to reword the trust documents.

That makes total sense.

A real shame, but as you've said, too late now.