I've had a relatively comprehensive read of materials in the public domain, particularly the documentation around what the Hive can and cannot be used for and planning permission rules.
It looks like there is no opportunity to increase the maximum crowd size beyond the existing fixed total which is a tickle under 5200. If one area increases in size, a corresponding area must decrease in size.
The fundamentals are that there is planning permission to play sports at the Stadium and there is seemingly no barriers around number of games or what type of sports are played on the ground. Basically there are no restrictions in the existing documentation, save for a restriction on league two football, but I don't believe it would hold if legally challenged, as it would be improbable to justify now that there are already paid crowds etc and thus the principle has already been established.
The residents concerns are almost certainly around the impact on house price. Other factors such as parking, floodlights and traffic are really a petty inconvenience as only midweek fixtures could really be a bother and only then very occasionally. The Council did not initially bother doing exhaustive study of everyone nearby's possible view and now it seems they are trying to be troublesome by challenging any progress or slight variation of the plan with red herring's and throwing in a spanner in the works.
Kleanthous appears to be incrementally adding to the Stadium in a way in which it would be difficult to reasonably block at each stage so if he does not get e.g. new floodlights he can always ask later so I don't see this as an issue.
What I think is going on is that Kleanthous has insisted that a kind of deduplication exercise takes place at Broncos - so for example he has a Facilities Manager and so do Broncos - he will insist that the Broncos employee is removed.
Otherwise when he buys in he will have issues in removing them as the new owner. This would be at many levels including compensation, time taken and TUPE.
He would not want a straightforward liquidation and then to buy in because of the points deduction which would just about guarantee bottom spot for next year.
This I think we will see roles lost at the Broncos, mainly duplicate ones, roles changed at the Hive (which insist that staff also work for the Broncos) and then Kleanthous will become the primary owner, with Hughes secondary.
Thus I am optimistic for the future with this scheme in place; after all we would not make some employees redundant but all of them if we were to fold.
I think also there has been a degree of opportunistic behaviour from the Broncos in looking to shed dead wood without additional compensation by letting the club look like it is gone. I think the guys who came onto the field for the last home game were symbolically released, but the rest they are looking to keep like Cookie etc.
Rammo
