Nottingham City Council has said it will suffer a “significant revenue loss” from the sale of the City Ground, but added that any other option would have risked Nottingham Forest leaving the site. The city council were being paid rent of £250,000 a year by Forest and following months of public dispute about the City Ground’s future, an agreement in principle has been reached which will see the Premier League club buy the stadium’s land from the council.
Although this will generate a one-off receipt for the financially struggling authority, it says that it will also result in big losses in the years to come given the lack of annual rent. Yet detailed papers released on the deal reveal that Forest’s purchase of the City Ground’s freehold was the only option it was willing to accept, aside from potentially leaving the stadium.
The threat of a Forest relocation came about early on in the public dispute between the club and council, with land previously earmarked for HS2 in Toton being repeatedly mentioned. The dispute centred on Forest’s plans to expand and redevelop the City Ground, with the city council arguing that the rent should therefore be increased to “north of a million.”
The dispute has now been resolved after Councillor Neghat Khan, Nottingham City Council’s leader, announced at a meeting on Monday (July 8) that the freehold purchase had been agreed in principle. The deal will have to be approved by a meeting of the council’s executive board on July 16 and papers being presented at that meeting spell out what comes next.
In terms of why the freehold option was chosen despite the revenue loss it will cause for the council, the papers say: “The tenant [Forest] has made its position clear that it would only wish to proceed with acquiring the freehold interest.” The city council says it will use reserves to “manage the pressure created” by the City Ground sale, with the authority saying it has enough money to cover the annual revenue loss.