The Great Clubhouse Scandal

It is unlikely that anyone will challenge Exeter City Council’s right to demolish the Clubhouse.  Legally, the Council owns the property.  Whether it has acted wisely, and correctly from a moral standpoint, may be an entirely different kettle of fish.

Study the facts, and judge for yourself.

The Clubhouse in 1972

When the courts and pavilion were first leased to the Club by Exeter City Council in October 1972, the Clubhouse was without basic facilities.  There was a water main in existence which served the property for the purpose of watering the shale courts, but there was no electricity supply to the premises, nor plumbing within the Clubhouse. This meant that the premises were without toilet and washing facilities.

Improvements Effected Entirely at the Club’s Expense

•  By October 1973, drainage requirements had been resolved and plumbing had been installed, including flush toilets and washing facilities, generously funded by the Club’s President, Mr B Gibson.

•  By July 1980, at the Club’s expense, South Western Electricity Board had laid a cable to the Clubhouse, and H C Jacobs had installed a fuseboard, and wired in power points and lighting, “all with local switches”.

•  A year or two later, with the approval  of Devon County Council, a concrete path of paving slabs was laid from the entrance gate to the Clubhouse and courts.  The work was generously carried out on a voluntary basis by Mr D Bayet.

•  A kitchen area was constructed with worktop, cupboards, drawers, sink with draining boards on each side, and a wall mounted water heater.  This was principally provided by Mr B Parr, who generously carried out the work on a voluntary basis.

•  Provision was made for hanging translucent tarpaulins which provided fully sheltered areas at each end of the verandah, chiefly for use by the referee or organiser during tournaments, and on special occasions when there was insufficient room for the number of people using the Clubhouse.

•  Several minor improvements were made:  Wire fuses upgraded to modern Miniature Circuit Breakers, double power point replaced by a model incorporating an RCD for safety, lighting in the toilets upgraded, plentiful fibre notice boards fitted, etc.

•  For safety reasons, the back of the Clubhouse was securely fenced off, with access via a heavy duty gate, in October 2003 at a cost of over £650.

The Legal and The Moral

All the improvements to the Clubhouse were sanctioned by the appropriate authorities and became the legal property of the landlord.

However, any right thinking person would agree that the huge improvements made at the expense of the Club and its members does give the Club a degree of moral interest in the fate of the Clubhouse.  The purpose of these improvements was to benefit the children for whom the Club was formed and functioned.  They were never intended to be abused by the landlord.

The City was an excellent landlord from 1972-1974, as DCC also proved to be from 1974-1999.  Things started to go wrong for the Clubhouse when it became probable that the Club premises were likely to return to ECC ownership.  The Club notified DCC of signs of woodworm at one end of the long locker on more than one occasion earlier this decade, but it was not treated.  Neither was the exterior decoration maintained in latter years.  That was understandable, given the likelihood of a land swap, but surely not right.

Back in 1973, the following was written on behalf of the City: “Finally, may I take this opportunity to congratulate your Committee upon their splendid efforts and for their part in creating a pleasant and harmonious working relationship between your club and this Authority".

The Club is essentially the same, but not so the City Council. The child-friendly authority of the early nineteen-seventies is no longer recognisable.  It gives every appearance nowadays of caring more for money and its own aggrandisement than it does for the welfare of children.  In particular, it rates public tennis courts for the Park above the Club.

Here is an account of the dubious circumstances which led to the precipitate demolition of the Clubhouse.

A Hidden Agenda ?

The Club had been bursting at the seams with a long waiting list for many years.  When school reorganisation opened up a window of opportunity for expansion in 1999, the Club submitted plans to DCC, widely distributed to ECC, the LTA, Sport England, etc. etc.

Sport England were extremely encouraging, and ECC Planning seemed to be smiling.  Both were urging a preliminary application so that the feasibility of the plans might be tested.  For this to become possible, the Club needed an extension to its current lease, both in terms of extra time and the use of extra land.  It would have been perfectly proper to make an extended lease conditional upon the Club obtaining funding and planning permission.

When it became apparent that no conditional lease was forthcoming, not unnaturally, the Club began to suspect a hidden agenda.

Devon County Council’s hidden agenda, which wasn’t really hidden, became apparent when it made a submission to the Local Plan Review for the whole of the site to be allocated for housing. This suggestion was not adopted.

From this decision (stated around July 2000) onwards, it has been difficult to see what use the site could be to DCC.  Hence, the possibility of a land swap with ECC must surely have been in the minds of DCC and ECC Councillors and Officers from that time.

With the possibility of ECC eventually taking ownership of the site, embryonic plans for its use must have crossed the minds of those at the Civic Centre.  It was at that point that the Council should have liaised with the Club, before any final solution gelled. A responsible democratic authority would have made a proper assessment of the Club which shared the site, and even consulted with it.  Neither occurred, or the Club would have known about it.

The Club made efforts to find out what had happened to its plans for expansion, but DCC and ECC resembled a black hole - much went in, but nothing came out.  The Club was left in the dark.

The events and circumstances surrounding ECC’s dealings with the Club will hopefully be well documented on other pages of this website, if that is not already the case, so the rest of this page is devoted to the miserable end suffered by the Clubhouse.

It needs to be reiterated that ECC changed the use of the old school playing field, exposing the Club to a greatly enhanced risk of vandalism, which occurred with a vengeance.  No provision or effort was made by the Council to protect the premises. Instead, it simply pleaded poverty, even though it boasted a £1,390,000 budget for the year “to improve parks, open spaces, playing fields and leisure facilities”.

Is it right for the Council to shift the goalposts, especially when it impacts so adversely on others, without making the necessary preparation and provision for the consequences of its actions?

It is considerations like these, taken with the series of events which followed, which make it appear that ECC deliberately engineered the removal of the Clubhouse to suit its own purposes.

Exeter City Council’s hidden agenda was much more difficult to determine.  Protests have been made from time to time that ECC had no hidden agenda, but this now seems to be only a half-truth. No secret was made of the Council’s wish to create a park, and that has had universal approval throughout as far as the Club has been aware.  Certainly, the Club itself always strongly approved.

The hidden part of the agenda was not an alternative use for the site, but that creation of the park should deny expansion to the Club, that the children’s exclusive use of the courts should be withdrawn, and the use of the courts shared with the general public.  Further, in the view of this website’s author, events have proved to him that ECC wished to displace the Club altogether.

Besides direct verbal evidence that Jim has been given for making this assertion, consider the manner of the demise of the Clubhouse, which should raise questions in the minds of every right thinking person regarding the good faith expressed towards the Club by Exeter City’s Councillors and Officers.

The Last Dark Days of a Valuable Community Asset

Immediately before the Club left the premises in February 2007, the Clubhouse was measured to enable a plan to be drawn whenever needed, and photographed inside and out to give a record of the condition of the Clubhouse when it was vacated following the Club’s ‘constructive eviction’.  These photographs speak volumes in the light of subsequent claims by the City Council.

Devon County Council secured the premises, and boarded the doors and windows of the Clubhouse to discourage vandalism.

As soon as ECC had ‘constructively evicted’ the Club and the premises had become vacant, ECC was willing to take possession of the site from DCC.  The Councils duly agreed final details of the land swap, and the transfer took place on 2nd May.

An assessment of the state of the Clubhouse was made at an on site meeting, held within a week of ECC taking possession, and a decision reached to demolish it.  The exact date is unknown, but the Club has gleaned that the ECC’s in-house surveyor, the two ECC Councillors for the ward, at least one ECC Leisure Officer, and possibly others made the inspection and reached the decision. No representative of the Club was present or received an invitation. In view of the Club’s huge investment in the Clubhouse over the years, this decision to demolish the building, reached in closed session consisting entirely of ECC personnel, appears to be both questionable and disreputable.

The dubious nature of this decision was emphasised when a member of the Summerway Committee, who is a structural engineer by profession, expressed the wish to visit the Clubhouse with ECC’s surveyor, and requested the surveyor’s contact details for this purpose.  This request was denied by ECC’s Leisure Manager, who wrote, “I don't think it is necessary at this stage for you to look at the pavilion with our surveyor, but attached is a copy of the report”.  No one at the Club believed that the Clubhouse was in any danger of collapse in the next few years.

This decision was followed by an exchange of emails where it was made quite clear that Summerway considered negotiations to be ongoing, and wished to meet with Council representatives.

A major ECC focus was the Club’s financial resources, and there were constant demands from the Council for copies of the Club accounts and bank statements.  There was strong feeling on the Committee against supplying these, on the grounds of them being none of the Council’s business.  The Club was not seeking to vary the partnership agreement, nor to apply for any grant.  If it were, the Club accounts would have been relevant to the Council.

The matter was brought to a head by a bullying ultimatum from ECC’s Leisure Manager, setting a deadline of 2nd July for receiving the Club accounts or “I shall arrange for the pavilion's demolition”.

The Committee had already recognised ECC’s obsession with money, which the ultimatum only confirmed, and was prepared to accede so that negotiations could proceed.  At the Committee meeting held two days prior to the receipt of the ultimatum, the release of the accounts had already been sanctioned, so immediate action was taken, and receipt of the accounts acknowledged by the Leisure Manager the day following his threatening demand.

As has been pointed out above, no action was taken by either Council to protect the Clubhouse from vandals, beyond DCC’s action of boarding it up.  There was an invasion of vandals towards the end of March resulting in damage to the boarding and the balusters at the far end of the verandah.  DCC promptly repaired the boarding, and cleared the debris.

It is clear from the report of the ECC Surveyor that the City Council received the building from DCC in a condition more or less unaltered from that when the Club vacated, with some damage to the balustrades. At this point ECC could have taken steps to protect its new asset from vandals.  Instead, it allowed the threat to continue, so that towards the end of June, vandals dislodged the electricity meter box, presumably to gain access to the interior of the Clubhouse, which quickly resulted in the loss of the building’s electricity supply.

Far from protecting the premises from vandals, the Council greatly increased the risk of serious damage to the Clubhouse by opening up a vandal route in mid-July.  This was immediately effective in hastening the building towards a state of dereliction, because the Council’s “naturally curious children” brutally attacked the pavilion and flattened the fencing adjacent to the entrance gate.

The Council tidied up, but instead of re-erecting the fencing, simply took it away, leaving the Clubhouse wide open to further abuse. This, taken with all the other indications, further demonstrated ECC’s hostile intent towards the Club’s former accommodation.

Only a few days after this, a member representing the Summerway Committee emailed the Leisure Manager regarding the timing of a meeting between Club and Council representatives, showing with absolute certainty that the Club was still trying to negotiate.

With the Committee having met the Leisure Manager’s demand for the Club accounts, thus averting the threat he made to arrange for the demolition of the Clubhouse, and the Club actively trying to negotiate as manifested in the paragraph above, ECC went ahead exactly a fortnight later and demolished the Clubhouse anyway.

This action was precipitate, and is incontrovertible evidence that ECC unilaterally withdrew from negotiations with the Club, making a complete mockery of all the professions of goodwill and well wishes towards the Club expressed by Councillors and Officers.

This was BLACK MONDAY for the Club - 6th August 2007 - which will stand forever as a day of immense shame for Exeter City Council.  This will be recalled to mind on every occasion in the future when the sorry Summerway saga is recited.

Finally, let us be kind and ask the obvious question euphemistically .....

Site Navigator

Top of Page

Who thinks, “This is distinctly malodorous!” ?