Lease on Ground

[Artemis]

I was told yesterday, that because of the number of years remaining on the York Street ground lease,  Boston United wouldn't be accepted into the Blue Square Premier.

I can't think this is a problem because no one has mentioned it previously - but can anyone shed any light on the subject - such as do the Blue Square Premier League have any rules relating to minimum years remaining on a Football Ground lease?


O/T - Crawley Town's ground capacity is only 4500 - are they going to move or add additional capacity to their ground, because as far as I am aware the minimum capacity for entry into the Football League is 6500.

[Tash]

1.1 Security of Tenure
The club must either:
(a) own the freehold of the ground
(b) have a lease of the ground for the remainder of the season during which an
inspection for grading is carried out and for the following season, or
(c) possess an agreement for the use of the ground that is acceptable to The Football
Association and The Football Conference.(This could be about 50 years in our case)
NB To be eligible for promotion to the The Football League a ground lease must be for a
minimum of 10 years
In addition, the club must disclose:
(a) Whether any Director or material shareholder of the club or any connected person or
company has a financial interest in the ground.
(b) Whether the club’s occupation of the ground is subject to any third party option.
(c) If any applicable planning consent are subject to restrictions, and
(d) Whether the ground is charged by way of security.
(e) Any break clauses in the lease exercisable either by landlord or tenant.
The club must provide copies of any documents so disclosed and The Football Association and The

[chris47]

For some reason this seems to have raised its uglyhead several times since our demise from League 2.

Should we be lucky enough to get promotion this year, I assume getting back into the Football League will need to be a further 2/3 year project at least just in terms of the new ground.

[Pete Brooksbank]

I was under the impression that Conference is fine, FL is a big no-no.

[Bostonshire]

I was under the impression that Conference is fine, FL is a big no-no.

Correct. Althou newton as said that he wouldnt allow the ground issue hole the team back if they did get that far

[Carl Newell]

Newton has said that if we got promoted this year then again next then the club would try to ground share with Lincoln. I would rather have Conference football personally. Even if we only had to pay Lincoln the same as we do the Malkinsons and got to keep the gate reciepts we would still have very little income as people from Boston wouldn't travel to Lincoln and besides it just wouldn't feel right...

[Pilgrim86]

Clubs are not allowed to groundshare just to satisfy ground-grading. We'd have to have at least one season at Sincil Bank in the Conference.

[Fairfax]

I have a strange feeling that if we ever look like getting back into the league, they will bring in a new rule that states that only grounds that have held an Olympic Games or a World Cup Final will be acceptable.

[The Big M]

Id rather play at peterborough than there

[Burton Pilgrim]

There can't be any problem getting into BS Prem, otherwise we wouldn't be allowed into the play offs - Solihull have to increase their seating before they can play in the play offs, and they have committed to do this so will be allowed to play.  I'm sure we would have heard by now if there was a problem with our ground.

Beyond the BS Prem, I don't think we'll need to worry about that for a few years - if we do go up we'll need to consolidate and build again at that level.  With a team full of young players, our best ones are likely to be courted by league clubs, and we have a few who wouldn't make the grade at the next level, so we'd need to make changes.

The important thing is to get a new ground approved and built in the next few years so that the club can progress further.  That means a ground to League 2 standards - doesn't need a huge capacity, as our crowds don't warrant it, but it does need conference facilities, function rooms etc so we can make money from it 7 days a week.