Club and Trust look for legal advice over the future of Racecourse lease in ‘amicable but complex’ discussions
Wrexham Supporters Trust are taking legal advice, paid for by Wrexham Football Club, as they look to resolve a request to surrender their lease to the Racecourse.
In June last year the football club purchased the freehold of the Racecourse from the University for £2,000,000 , at the time the club Chairman said they had “agreed to include a covenant on the freehold” to ensure the Racecourse Ground will remain the home of Wrexham AFC until at least 2115, unless a move away is necessary because the stadium can no longer meet the Club’s requirements.
The club also asked WST Assets Ltd to surrender the lease with the club saying it ‘is no longer required to protect the Racecourse Ground as the permanent home of Wrexham AFC’.
Currently the club own the Racecourse, with the WST effectively having an active lease for the Racecourse from the landlord, who then sub-lease back to the club to play there.
In January the club expressed their concern over the delay in getting the issue resolved, giving a timeline of assurances and stated “frustration is growing”.
On the most recent Fearless In Devotion podcast WST Chairman Barry Jones spoke about the topic, saying “The club only has 22 year lease from the Supporters Trust, but let me reassure everybody we are not going to throw the club off the Racecourse, we are the people who fought tooth and nail to get the club staying at the Racecourse.”
Mr Jones detailed the progress of talks and the journey to this point, “The reason it’s taken so long is because after the club was sold to Rob and Ryan eight members of the trust resigned, because they’ve done their job – done everything. We were not quorate. We didn’t have enough members on the board.
“It wasn’t until July 2022 when I joined the board and subsequently voted as Chairman, that we actually became quorate and actually could do any negotiations with the club.
“We then had to wait until October for the Financial Conduct Authority to give us the approval to do what we were doing. Because, to simplify it, we’ve only got one asset and that’s the lease, if we give the lease away for a pound for argument’s sake. That is as bad as Hamilton selling the £6.5 million pound Racecourse to himself for a pound. We the board would be personally liable for that.”
Mr Jones detailed four months of work from a range of legal professionals from Wrexham fans and other football fans, all for free, from Taylor Wessing and Mishcon de Reya, some of whom have worked with the Chelsea Pitchowners. The latter being an organisation that owns the freehold to Stamford Bridge, and the naming rights for Chelsea FC.
Mr Jones added, “Wrexham have put forward a proposal to us,we are both on the same side, we want the best results. It’s got to go to King’s Council, just to make sure that the Trust and not in a worse position when they change the new structure than we are today.”
“So once we get King’s Council Review, as to ‘these are the options’ we will then put the proposal to a full members vote” of 806 WST members.
Mr Jones referred to the discussions with club solicitors, based in Leeds, as ‘amicable but complex’.
Wrapping up the comments he added, “We have 100% belief in Rob and Ryan. The issue is in many years to come Rob and Ryan will sell the club one day. I hope it’s not for 20 years or 30 – whatever. But what we don’t want is Hamilton II. Rob and Ryan own the football club, they bought the freehold from the university – and there is the lease.”
“What we don’t want to do is get a deal and then five years later, someone says ‘you know what? you’ve got no security on this’.
“It may not be proceeding as quickly as as a Shaun Harvey and those would like, but that is unfortunately, the British legal system”
Wrexham AFC have not yet published a response to the WST statement.
The issue over ground ownership and leases is the latest in what has been a turbulent past for the Racecourse.
Historically the ground was leased for many years from brewers Marston Thomas & Evershed, with a formal extension to that lease taking place in 1998.
A 125-year lease was secured for £750k and then a £1 a year peppercorn rent – the theory being the club would be able to stay secure for over a century until the year 2123.
But loathsome former owners and new Disney+ stars Alex Hamilton and Mark Guterman embarked on “The Wrexham Project”, shafting the club by effectively switching the freehold to one of their own companies in 2002 after then majority shareholder Pryce Griffiths sold up his shares.
The ‘project’ would have likely seen Wrexham AFC evicted from the Racecourse under landlord Hamilton, and much like long dead Chester City FC up the road, with the ground being converted to a retail park or B&Q.
Whilst lucrative for the developers, it would have probably struck a killer blow for the football club.
Fans and administrators fought to reverse the transactions, which saw a High Court ruling challenged in the Court of Appeal, before the freehold finally reverted back to club which by then was at that point run by administrators.
However, the saga was not over as the club’s next owners, yet-to-be-Disney-famous holiday flogger Geoff Moss and Ruthin’s Ian Roberts, carved up the freehold site to build the infamous student flats.
The development was enabled by a ‘gamble‘ from Wrexham Council’s planning committee, who seemed easily impressed by the celebrity appearance of manager Dean Saunders.
The ground was later sold to Glyndwr University in 2011 by Messrs Moss and Roberts as part of an enabling plan to allow fans group Wrexham Supporters Trust (WST) to take over the debt-ridden club for a token pound.
The ‘Wrexham Village’ flats remained separate, going on sale for £13,000,000 in 2016, while the WST run club signed a new 99 year lease with the university for use and operational control of the stadium, again with the assurance of ‘securing the club and its historical home in the hands of its supporters for generations to come’.
In 2018, the flats, on part of the old footprint of the site, sold for £11m with the university buying them from Moss and Roberts’ company – with ‘Sibco Ltd’ and ‘Gelco Ltd’ as shareholders.
More recently the club and ground were re-united in the £2m deal, leaving the club as the landlord, with an effective tenant of the WST who then is issuing a sub-lease back to the club.
The full new WST statement is below:
Chair Barry Jones provided the following update to members on negotiations with the club regarding the Racecourse Lease.
We have been engaged in regular, detailed, discussions with the Club over the past four months, as they have asked the Supporters Trust to surrender our lease on the Racecouse/Cae Ras. This lease was originally put in place to protect us from another Hamilton type owner and ensure that the ground can only be used as a sports stadium, as opposed to being redeveloped for residential or commercial use.
Our lease has 92 years to run and we understand that our owners’ motive for removing the lease is to facilitate raising finance for major ground improvement and re-development. The Trust will obviously not stand in their way as long as the Club’s long-term future at the Racecourse/Cae Ras is ensured.
The Club has offered an alternative to the lease, which includes undertakings to the Trust designed to ensure that the Racecourse Ground/Cae Ras can only be used as the home of Wrexham AFC. The proposed legal structure is not straightforward and the Club and the Trust are in the process of jointly obtaining a King’s Counsel opinion to confirm the extent to which the proposal gives us the same long-term assurances as the current lease.
The Club has agreed to pay the costs of the King’s Counsel as well as the Trust’s legal costs in obtaining our own legal advice from a leading London firm of solicitors. Three Trust members with extensive legal and property experience are advising your Board and are hopeful of a positive and speedy outcome.
We hope to be able to put a proposal to a Trust members vote later in the summer, once the King’s Counsel opinion has been received. We will provide members with an update when appropriate and will continue to work with the Club to achieve the best long-term outcome for all of us.
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