The board are now in a position to update everyone on our final crowdfunding total and the latest on our plans for the ground improvements.
Firstly, thank you all for your patience in waiting for news on our progress, there have been so many moving parts that it has been challenging to deliver a coherent update before today.
In terms of crowdfunding, all of our offline donations are now cleared and we’re delighted to say that the final total is £40,168.
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed and made it possible for us to move the project forward. It’s testament to the strength of our club that so many of you wanted to support the project and develop OUR club for the future. We’re so grateful to everyone who made a donation.
During the crowdfunding period we also submitted our bid to The Football Foundation to access funding for the project. As you’d expect, there is a very robust process for applicants to follow and it required significant work from the board to complete all of the necessary stages prior to submission. We’re delighted to say that we received news recently that our application has been approved in full and that the Football Foundation will fund a significant amount of the cost of the project.
Once we received this news, we placed the orders with our suppliers for both the turnstiles and main stand. This is a significant milestone as we work towards our deadline to have the new facilities in place and we are in dialogue with both suppliers around timelines for the work to be completed.
The final piece in the jigsaw is the planning consent from Enfield Council. We have been working closely with council officers and have employed a planning consultant to navigate us through the process. Again this has required lots of work from the board and after an initial submission to the planning department they asked us to provide both a travel and acoustic survey to demonstrate any potential impact that the increased capacity may have on our neighbours. We’re pleased to say that both surveys were completed at our recent fixtures against Hornchurch and Torquay and we are now working with our consultant to submit our final application to Enfield Council in the week commencing 16th December. There is then a period of consultation before we expect our plans to go before Enfield Council’s committee in January. Once we have this permission, works will start as soon as possible in order that we can comply with league deadlines.
A huge thanks to everyone who has contributed to this process as well as our friends at Enfield Council and Enfield Ignations for their support and collaboration throughout the project.
Please do speak to any board member if you have any further questions
ETFC Board