October has been a fairly busy month for Bees United (BU), with progress on several fronts, including liaison with local community groups, the stadium project, the internal “one Brentford” initiative, and the Supporters Direct annual conference.
On the local community front, Brian Burgess attended a meeting of the Brentford Community Council, another important local community group. While he was primarily there to bring them up to date with the stadium project, we will follow up and ensure that BU remains close to them on a more general basis. The initial reaction to the stadium proposals was as positive as it has been from all other local stakeholders, but we need to ensure that we retain that support as the project gathers momentum, and that all local concerns are dealt with.
Brian and I also attended the Rotary Club of Kew Gardens at their Kew Resources Forum, a meeting they convene every six months of local charities and community groups. Once again, the main purpose was to explain the outline plans for Lionel Rd, but there was considerable surprise in our audience at the extent to which we are, as a club, involved in supporting the local community, through the Griffin Park Learning Zone (GPLZ) and the Brentford FC Community Sports Trust. It is vital that we continue to spread the word as it appears even our closest neighbours are often unaware of this activity. We were invited to keep in touch with the Rotary Club and to keep them updated of our progress on the stadium.
The club hosted the monthly meeting of the Brentford Chamber of Commerce in the Hive on 14 October. The Chamber invited us to present the commercial opportunities provided by the new stadium to their members and it was also a chance to engage with the local business community on home territory. It was the first time some of those businesses had been inside Griffin Park and, that, in itself, made the evening worthwhile for us. Brentford Chamber had also widened the invitation to the Hounslow Chamber of Commerce, and, as a consequence, we were invited to sponsor one of their business lunches in January. I attended this month's gathering at the Moran Hotel in Chiswick to see the format and made a number of contacts for the club to follow up. This is yet another example of one of the elements of the Brentford family working in tandem with the others. The interest in the stadium opens new doors for the club and we must exploit those opportunities to engage with a wider audience, and to tell them how we are operating as a genuine community club.
BU (DK) were also in attendance when the stadium group met the Football Supporters’ Federation to discuss the possibility of incorporating areas of terracing (safe-standing) in the design for Lionel Road. As you all know, the desire for terracing and for the unique atmosphere which can be generated by terracing was a key finding in our supporters’ survey earlier this year. BIAS put us in contact with the FSF who are campaigning with government and football governing bodies to repeal the legislation governing stadium design, and we wanted to catch up with their progress. The key issue surrounding terracing in Lionel Road for BFC and the Lionel Road stadium company is funding, because under current rules there is no likelihood of money being released for installing terracing in new stadia. We will continue to monitor this situation, and we supplied the FSF with our survey results to support their case. They in turn supplied us with copies of their hugely persuasive report advocating the case for safe standing. It is available on their website.
There has been a lot of activity on the "One Brentford" front, pulling all the individual elements of BFC together to exploit our collective expertise. We have had two meetings in the last month, the first, a very productive session exploring how we might combine the efforts of the Community Sports Trust and the club for more effective marketing to local companies, and the second looking specifically at targeting marketing efforts towards building loyalty among existing supporters and recruiting new supporters. The promotion of home shirts for the Havant & Waterlooville FA Cup match was a direct consequence of this meeting, and there will be other initiatives to follow throughout the season. We will also be able to talk soon in more detail about a couple of events being run by all of us, the first one, a "Fans Day" to reward the loyalty of existing fans, and another to raise money for the club and other local good causes. There is huge support within the club for us all to work together and it appears to be having positive results.
We had a BU group outing to the Supporters Direct annual conference on 16 October with David Merritt, Brian Burgess, Jon Gosling and myself in attendance. It was a very big gathering, over 170 people from 107 clubs that have some form of Supporter Trust involvement in their management, from all levels of the league pyramid, from all over the UK, and from Spain and Germany. Despite coinciding with the parade for the Olympians, we were addressed by both the Secretary of State for Sport and the Shadow Sports Minister, and for the first time, by the Chairman of the FA, Lord Triesman. I have already written a fuller summary of my impressions of the conference and the way that other clubs regard us as a flagship brand for the association on the Bees United website. Suffice to say that it is clear we are leading a trend that is being endorsed here and abroad as the way forward for football clubs, at a time when the alternatives are attracting nothing but negative coverage.
Underlining how we are viewed by others, I was contacted later in the month by Russell Clark, who has the community role on the board of the recently formed Hampton & Richmond Borough Trust, and we spent a morning in the GPLZ running through our work and exploring how he could take some of our ideas and apply them down at the Beveree.
Donald Kerr