Investment in the club

once you get past all the cow towing/apologising for asking a question of brent, greensams question is a good one.

I suppose effectively Brent could now start charging the club rent for using his pot-holed car park on match days, the ticket office etc, not that I'm suggesting he will. It does concern me the restrictions we'll now have with any new stand, parking and whatnot. Are there any drawings of the original Phase 2 plans online?

If done right, could add to the life centre facility, visiting swimming teams could overnight or dine at the hotel.

Is the club still receiving it's subsidy by way of PCC in the form of discounted business rates?

Greenman wrote:

The council must have known about Brent's plans last year and probably why they wanted him to own Argyle cos they could work in partnership with him, rather than some Heaney type character building what he wants at Home park.

Nobody can build what they want at Home Park - planning consents, the Area Action Plan, not to mention the vocal NIMBY's of the Central Park Dogwalkers Collective, or whatever they're called, can all throw a spanner in the works. What Brent understood, and others failed to grasp, is that the Council will treat someone more favourably if they show some willingness to work with the Council, rather than blazing their own trail. That's what Brent has done; from the start he's said that any development would be in line with the AAP. Presumably that still stands, and the new grandstand, plus any additional buildings, will be in keeping with the needs of the Plan.

As with all these announcements, the devil is in the detail, and while it could be broadly accepted that there are positives and negatives to what's been revealed, a few things do stand out - the timing for one. After being told that Brent wouldn't artificially inflate the turnover in order to provide more flexibility with the 55% wage cap, that seems to be exactly what this additional £700k does. Except of course that it was announced 24 hours after the loan window shut. Cynics amongst us might suggest that this was no coincidence.

Then there's the vague and rather ambiguous reference to the James Brent pension fund. If it's his personal fund then there's the question of tax avoidance to consider. Legal, certainly, but somewhat at odds with the much vaunted ethical aspirations for the way the club is to do business. If it refers to one of his companies' pension funds then, put simply, why doesn't it make that clear - Akkeron or Saltrock, for instance?

On the question of rent to the Council, it certainly seems to be fair to suggest that by building a new Grandstand, Brent et al are increasing the value of the Council's asset; maybe it's not so daft that he should seek a lowering of the rent in return for the appreciation to the value of one of the Council's capital assets.

My main concern remains that it was originally stated that any unbudgeted income would be put towards paying up the monies owed to the unpaid staff that bit quicker. At the time it was generally assumed that this would be in the form of money from cup runs or player sales. But this £700,000 certainly falls in the 'unbudgeted income' category, so it will be interesting to see how much, if any, makes its way to the staff. If only the GAS Board had been up and running, this is precisely the sort of thing it would have been able to look at. But I'm sure that announcing this transaction before the formation of the Board is in now way an attempt to avoid scrutiny or clamp down on transparency.

Absolutely spot on Andy!

Grovehill wrote:

Peggy wrote:

knecht wrote:

The £700,000 paid by Brent's pension fund for the purchase of the 'car-park'area is to be used for operating costs. Any funding to develop the ground will be extra.

Statement from James Brent on radio Devon.

Correct.

He also seemed to be saying the funds might help the purchase of new players, which is good. But I didn't hear him say anything about paying the staff some more of what they're owed, which isn't so good.

Funnily enough, the deal is announced the day after the transfer window shut for the season.

Pity this deal wasn't done in January when people were asking why money wasn't being spent on the team and JB was saying there wasn't any available and he wouldn't "break the rules"

Would there be a possibility that this £700k will be included in next years budget and therefore,by definition,would not be "unbudgeted income"? Clever and not very helpful to staff who have lost money over the past year,maybe the thinking is to nvest the money on the playing side for next season,set a breakeven figure and any extra income above that figure forthcoming from a successful season used to pay off the staff debt.Or maybe not.We shall see.

On the subject of any proposed new stand,like GOB,i'm slightly perturbed by the"can add capacity later" bit.I do believe this mantra was trotted out by Stapes when 3 sides of the ground were rebuilt in 2001/2 in a comparatively cheap and ordinary fashion,which hardly sent out a stirring message that the ambition was anything higher than the CCC.I could not for the life of me see how those stands could ever be extended to make the ultimate capacity 27000,which was the proposed figure, and still can't.Does anyone have an idea how this would [or indeed could] be achieved? If any new stand were to be similar in design to those at Stoke,where the corners have the potential to be filled in,then i guess that would be OK,but what we don't want is something cheap and nasty which would prove to be a long term millstone to the club should it make progress at least back to the second tier.It wll be interesting to see what transpires.

Wouldn't carrying £700k over to next year be seen as profit this year and heavily taxed?.

Perhaps everyone's on a nice bonus to survive this season, meh, who am I kidding.

Coxside_Green wrote:

Wouldn't carrying £700k over to next year be seen as profit this year and heavily taxed?.

Perhaps everyone's on a nice bonus to survive this season, meh, who am I kidding.

Would it be carried over,though? If it's actually paid over to the club coffers after the end of this financial year,then i wouldn't have thought so.

Greenskin wrote:

Coxside_Green wrote:

Wouldn't carrying £700k over to next year be seen as profit this year and heavily taxed?.

Perhaps everyone's on a nice bonus to survive this season, meh, who am I kidding.

Would it be carried over,though? If it's actually paid over to the club coffers after the end of this financial year,then i wouldn't have thought so.

I've no idea. The wording on the OS stated it happened "today" (as in Friday). Whatever the plans are I'm sure they wouldn't want to pay more tax than is necessary. If anything it was probably done to cover losses this season (which we were previously told there would be).