COMPENSATION of £600,000 to allow the former owner of Basingstoke Town Football Club to build a housing estate on the historic Camrose ground "lets Basron off the hook", according to the club's vice chairman.

Instead a larger amount of money should be given to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council to hold in an Escrow account whilst details for a like-for-like replacement are finalised, Kevin White says.

It comes after the Gazette revealed that Sport England had put a £600,000 price tag on how Basron have already and could in the future benefit from the club moving out of the Camrose.

However, Kevin White has said that the proposed mitigation from the public body does not yet take into account a true replacement for the Camrose, only considering the upgrades to the club's future home at the Hampshire FA headquarters in Winklebury.

"We want to keep football in the town and Winklebury is a fix at the moment," he told the Gazette.

"Longer term, the club would want, and the town deserves, a second, like-for-like stadium that matches the club's ambitions.

"I personally would like to see a larger amount of money go towards a second stadium."

Now, Kevin, as well as the club's chairman Terry Brown, have penned a joint letter to the borough council setting out their opposition to the loss of the Camrose.

"We strongly oppose the loss of the Camrose as a vital community leisure and cultural amenity, especially with proposals that do not meet the town's need," they said.

"We fully and vehemently support the continued need for two football stadiums in the town.

"Planning approval conditional on 'like for like' replacement requirements on the developer need to be directed at securing a two stadium future."

The pair say that Basron's proposal of flats on the site is "not what South Ham or the town needs", and called the relief road plans an "opportunistic action to land grab".

They go on to say that whilst they would like the Camrose to remain a sporting facility, a new stadium should be provided in case that cannot happen.

"While Winklebury allows the first team to play competitively there, the demand for the facilities and the balanced letting policy required of Hampshire FA means that BTCFC cannot obtain training and matchplay slots for all its existing junior teams, nor a Saturday slot for its planned reserve team," the letter goes on to say.

"Obviously, our priority is that the Winklebury Football Complex is used by the community as well as our club, but by the very fact that we cannot use it for all of our teams as we did the Camrose, surely shows that it is not a like for like replacement."

They propose that mitigation for the Camrose development would be a reimbursement of the £208,000 spent so far on upgrading Winklebury, as well as financial contributions for further development to bring the complex up to grade C standard, as well as covering the cost of works on a new like-for-like stadium.

Mr Razzak said that he was “doing [my] best to try to get it sorted out”, but declined to comment specifically on the figures raised by Sport England at this time.

  • The Gazette has launched a petition to save the Camrose. You can view and sign it here: https://bit.ly/2SDDSh4.