Chelsea want to move their football ground from Stamford Bridge to Battersea Power Station, but the Mayor of London could stop it.
Chelsea moving to Battersea Power Station is a fascinating proposition for many reasons.
It not only offers to change the footballing landscape of London, but culturally it could do a lot for an area of the capital which desperately needs regeneration.
The bad news for Chelsea, politically, they already have two big opponents who wish to scupper the bid.
The first, and somewhat predictably are Hammersmith and Fulham Council, who estimate that Chelsea bring in £30 million to the borough’s surrounding businesses per year. Losing that would undoubtedly be a blow.
H&F Council want to work with Chelsea to expand Stamford Bridge from it’s 41,800 capacity to 55,000, a move they admit would be ‘difficult’ but see it as preferable to losing them altogether.
Roman Abramovich does not look to be interested. He has his eyes on a £60,000 plus stadium in Battersea, and has already spent a large unspecified amount on feasability studies at converting the power station.
Re-elected Mayor of London Boris Johnson is the big heavyweight opposition, who carries far more clout than the local authority, and actually wields the power to stop it happening altogether.
Battersea Power Station has long been earmarked for housing projects, with detailed plans put forward, but the recession has meant these expensive plans have never been able to get off the ground and are now dead in the water.
The Mayor of London is under pressure from central Government to create and build a certain number of homes within a certain time frame. The big problem is that in London very few ‘brownfield’ sites, as they are known, are available for building on.
Battersea Power Station is one of the very few which are suitable for that, which is why Boris Johnson wants to preserve the site as an allotted housing usage when economic conditions recover, rather than see the opportunity lost altogether and a football stadium built it its place.
Not even Roman Abramovich’s offer to regenerate the area’s tube connections has appeared to sway Boris so far.
The normal procedure would, if Chelsea are announced preferred bidders, be (1) issue architects to draw up final plans (2) consult with local residents (3) request Wandsworth Council to approve planning permission.
If it were approved, usually that would be the end of that. But Boris Johnson has powers as London Mayor to ‘call in’ any decision made by a local authority and overrule it.
It is a rare approach, but one he has done twice before, most significantly in West London over in Southall, where Ealing Council refused a 3,750 housing project at the old Southall Gas Works site to go ahead. Boris cancelled that and ordered it go ahead in 2010.
That is not all. After his re-election, Boris Johnson has called upon no other than the Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council Steven Greenhalgh to become one of his deputies. Clearly they are on the same page on more than just opposing Chelsea’s move to South London, which is ominous for the club.
The good news for Chelsea’s plans? The economic situation does not look like recovery any time immediately. The Mayor may decide he has little option to approve Abramovich’s plans, which could trigger further investment in Battersea, and smaller amounts of housing and retail units on the surrounding land. A compromise may be met.
Boris may have four more years now in charge, but planning issues of this scale can drag on for far longer. Chelsea may be able to hold out until 2016 and hope for a new mayor and a change of attitude towards the project.
Then there is the legal option, should Abramovich find an angle to pursue. He has the financial clout to back an argument against the Mayor and appeal any decision at the High Court.
It could be a long road for Chelsea’s latest project, full of tough challenges, but the Mayor’s opposition does not quite make it dead in the water. In fact, the battle is only just beginning.
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image: © BackBoris2012
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