My frustration is that KT has four times issued statements that talks are 'progressing' with NBC BUT the Councillors, who I thought were elected to represent their constituents, have not informed us if those statements are true or false!
I thought there was two parties in the discussions!
What the FOI shows is that since June 2018 when NBC agreed that the CDNL lease needed amending to correct the boundaries between NTFC and CDNL land the delay has been primarily with our owners. DB/KT declined and to this day have continued to decline to sign the legal document submitted by the Council to correct the boundary. That took matters to the end of 2018.
In January 2019 KT and, for reasons it may regret, NBC issued a joint statement claiming “positive discussions” were in progress. There is no evidence in the FOI of what these discussions were. In fact, it was not until July 2019, 7 months latter that there is any indication of anything development wise happening and that was for a hotel project on NTFC land which was dead in the water before the end of October. In other words and to be fair to the Council there was nothing to decide because there was nothing submitted to it by KT to decide on.
The latest position at the end of December was that the Council were seeking an updated valuation of the development land based on it being used for logistics warehouses. KT had in late October made a proposal to NBC about the land but what the proposal is/was is redacted on grounds of "commercial sensitivity". I expect the land valuation is connected to this but it is impossible to comment or speculate further.
My own take is that the Council up until June 2018 were extremely slow but I don’t know how far KT pushed them or if it was a convenient excuse allowing him to blame the Council for the delay. That is exactly what KT claimed. Since June 2018 responsibility for the delay has been primarily with our owners who have moved the goalposts on supporters and the Council and are now saying in effect that under their ownership the East Stand will only be completed from development profits or the certainty of those profits. The safe-standing project is just part of the wider picture of owners unwilling to invest in the infrastructure of our football club. The explanation put out yesterday that it is not full convinced there is the demand flies in the face of the club’s own survey of North Stand STHs which showed that 85% of those canvassed are in favour. Another example of KT kicking the can down Walter Tully Way.
Neither the Council nor our owners come out of this situation with any credit but it is for our owners to come forward with development proposals and they have been very slow in doing that. Given the lack of progress we could be years away from anything happening. If supporters accept that then KT will continue to enjoy an easy ride at NTFC.