Charles Bannerman

I said at the meeting that I didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonise the Council in the run up to this vote. God knows, Highland Council is a complete mess and in far more respects than this, but I reckon you need to be pragmatic so it’s not a good idea to tell them that under the current circumstances.

Based on the information given to us at the meeting, I think STFU has hit the nail on the head with the “loss of green space v net zero contribution” summary, although if these councillors were to be pragmatic, they would also take into account (without necessarily admitting it!) the extra £125K in business rates - even if they don’t give a toss about the future of club that has brought the Highlands untold public attention through winning the Scottish Cup and playing in Europe. (Indeed, how valuable to the Highlands was “going ballistic” alone? It’s difficult to quantify the “green energy dividend”, even with the numbers provided by the club, but it does appear to be significant. However, I think that the real power (no pun intended!) behind the argument in favour is the statistic we were given that the installation would only occupy 4% of the green area on that site, leaving 96% still untouched. I might also add that a hell of a lot of potential green space at places like the West Link and Craig Dunain seems to be yielded up by the Council to house builders without a hair being turned - and there are doubtless other similar instances. One further point. What would it look like if Councillors from over 100 miles away were seen to turn out mob handed and overturn a decision taken by an admittedly small but perfectly legal group of their colleagues representing areas much closer to the installation in question.

The thought of administration appals, but can’t be ignored even as a remote possibility. We don’t know exactly how much is owed to various people who have been chipping in to keep the club going, so we do have to wonder how much money, given in benevolent gestures to plug holes, might be at stake. Also, with all this spotlight on the club’s finances, how willing might local traders be to do business with it if they perceive some danger of bills not being paid, or only paid in small part? Unfortunately, I have to add that the demise of the concert company will already have done nothing to ease any such concerns. And if the administration horror show did materialise, how unwilling might future benefactors and suppliers be after the club emerged from it? There’s a huge amount riding on the next few weeks…. and minimal room for manoeuvre.

I don’t believe that valuation emerged as an issue at all.

Thank you for your observation, OCG, and also to Willsy. That was totally resolved after the meeting when I had a good chat with the Chairman. He’s clearly under a lot of pressure and perhaps my use of the term “sales pitch” in relation to the start of his statement wasn’t the best choice when I was just trying to suggest that there was no urgent need to “sell” the benefits of a battery farm to the people who were there. I was more concerned about finding out how much money was involved, what the implications for the club were if this is delayed or refused, what the club’s precise role is and what the mechanics of the whole project were. I think we are now a fair bit further on in understanding what we had previously perceived to be “Caley Thistle’s battery farm worth a ‘seven figure sum’ to the club.”

I have to say that I feel a good deal more positive about the whole business, now that some vital information is in the public domain following tonight’s meeting. The absolute game changer is that the sum involved is £3.4M or, as the Chairman put it “seven Ryan Christies”. However that figure could in part be a little vulnerable, especially if planning is delayed. And we were also told that there’s going to be some kind of “Caley Thistle Battery Farm Company” that will sell interests to concerns on the industry and these deals. The club has a 40 year lease on the land, which appears to be owned by Messrs Cameron and Sutherland. There was a lot of stuff making the point about how beneficial battery farms are and how low planning risk this is. I’m not sure what value that approach is so late in the day but I gather that everyone on the club’s mailing list will be getting an email with Councillors’ addresses for lobbying purposes. As far as I can see, the situation is that if it goes through in the 14th, then the £3.4M is pretty well in the bag. And if it doesn’t, all is not necessarily lost because there’s optimism that an appeal to the Scottish Government would be successful, but at some cost. Specifically, that could take 6-9 months, a perhaps modest slice of the £3.4M might be lost, there would be significant cash flow challenges and the accounts, which have been delayed until the end of May, would be expected to show a less favourable “going concern” status from the auditor. However I also note that, with echoes of the £900K of 1995/96, KCs now seem to be mobilised so I suppose disappearance into the legal morass can’t be discounted. I did venture to suggest that if the Council tie themselves in knots… they could always pay the £3.4M from the Commob Good Fund.

I’m not “in and around” nearly as much as I used to be in years gone by, but I seem to be detecting a degree of unhappiness and anger about the club’s current status. It’s not the same kind of issue as in 1993/94, but are you suggesting that levels of discontent are in that ballpark?

So should they have given the Rose Street Hall a stay of execution to host this meeting, OCG? Could have saved a lot of demolition costs.

Looks as if the locals haven’t taken too well to the visit of Duncan and the lads!

Don’t even mention it! Last spring, when I was still writing a column for the Courier, I did one on what I’ve been saying here - that I don’t think the immediate local area can support two sizeable clubs and, that in a normal business scenario, a merger would make sense BUT (very large but) football is NOT normal business so the idea was inconceivable. However they published this online with a headline claiming I was calling for a merger and, with most people unable to go behind the paywall, I got serially slaughtered for something I didn’t say… and even rejected. In a football environment, it’s a total non-starter.

I can’t see that it would directly do so but (and this is only a guess on my part) if planning permission were to be granted on March 14th, then might that positively influence any “Going Concern” statement within any accounts issued after that date? Perhaps, as an Edit, I should add that the club’s “Going Concern” status has been a significant issue at at least one recent AGM.

I have tried for years to be optimistic as I can about the financial future and, while several factors have been operating, I think there is one huge and probably unavoidable fundamental - the Inner Moray Firth plus some hinterland is an insufficient base for two “sizeable” football clubs. It was fine at the start in the Third Division with an added novelty factor, but as Caley Thistle and Ross County both grew and moved up the leagues, that progress was only made possible by £5M from Tullochs and some very good club and football management in the case of ICT and repeated subsidy of Ross County by Roy MacGregor. In County’s case, their latest loss of £579K has been announced today and that has been written off, as it tends to be annually, by their “holding company”. And even that level of ongoing subsidy is JUST keeping the club in the Premiership. In the case of ICT, the factors I mentioned there worked through the system some years ago and since about 2018 the club has been substantially loss making and dependent on ad hoc emergency handouts as it now clings to second tier status. There have also been other factors and members of the business community tell me that Inverness Caledonian Thistle is not flavour of the month in many quarters - especially since the collapse of the Concert Company where the club netted a large stadium rent before the company went bankrupt, leaving local traders out of pocket. The bottom line (personal view) is that the local area is unable to sustain these two clubs ant current levels and, should Roy MacGregor’s support of County end, the deficit would be even greater. However, in a football environment there is NO way out of a situation where two companies are fundamentally loss making in the same marketplace, unless one shrinks massively. It would appear that the battery farm might well be another short term fix, and a big one, but here there is a dilemma. Much as we would love to see this latest income source realised, the Councillors who will be making the decision are obliged to do so solely on the merits/demerits, practicability, safety, environmental implications etc. That the football club has a substantial financial interest cannot be a consideration in a completely isolated planning situation.

Around 4pm today, which should have been deadline day for the club’s accounts, a notification appeared on Companies House that IT and C’s accounting period had been shortened by a day to May 30th 2023. This apparently entitles a company to an extension of their deadline for publishing accounts by three months, and is apparently an established device for achieving this.

As I recollect, the Articles of Association say that there must be an AGM in each calendar year and that there must never be more than 15 months between them. The last one was 19 months after its predecessor and there was no AGM at all in 2022.

Maybe… but he’s also probably already been out to buy his lederhosen and long white socks.

The last AGM was on 26th April 2023, and it was more than four months in default of the deadline stated in the company’s Articles of Association. This also means that there is no obligation to hold another one before 26th July 2024, and even that may be subject to further delay if there is another default.

Some posters on here here need to get their facts right… so I’m correcting you because you are very wrong! In 1995/96 - by which time the merger had been done and dusted several months previously - Inverness District Council voted to award the club £900,000 from the council budget towards the approach road to the stadium - a road which has now paid for itself many times over by opening up the entire Harbour area. However the Council - note the Council - got itself into the most terrible mess because a group of councillors and officials tried to stop payment, hence putting the entire stadium project in danger. With time running out before IDC went out of existence in favour of Highland Council on 1st April 1996, it looked as if the grant couldn’t physically be paid, making court action apparently unavoidable, until HC CEO Arthur McCourt managed to have the money paid from the Inverness Common Good Fund. The reality here is that Inverness District Council were most definitely the “bad guys” back then when they almost secured the demise of the club because a stadium was an SFL membership condition, and when a solution was eventually found, the spin off for the entire city was enormous. Best to check what really happened when you are intent on stirring

Thank you for these responses and any others would be welcome in an attempt to clarify exactly what is going on here. I am more than prepared to be corrected on this, but it is, however, beginning to look likely that this is far from “Caley Thistle’s battery farm” and more like the club being used as a vehicle for ILI to gain access to suburban site for an industrial installation. Whether there is also an element of using the club’s position as a prominent local sporting entity as a lever to realise this objective is perhaps also worth considering. As an ITandC shareholder (very minor!), I’m a bit disappointed that more clarity has not been provided to those who actually own the club. When the BF was mentioned at the last AGM, it didn’t appear to be at an advanced enough stage for detail to be sought, and in any case everyone was still smarting from the demise of the Concert Company. The BF issue will certainly need to be pursued at the next AGM although, remembering that the date of the last one breached the requirements of the company’s Articles of Association by several months, it’s not clear when that might take place. One further observation - for how long would the “seven figure sum” or whatever other benefit is expected here keep the ever present financial wolf from the door, given that there may be loans to pay off (?) and also the fundamentally large loss making football operation?

I’m beginning to lose the thread of this Battery Farm issue and there are one or two fundamentals I would like to be able to establish - fundamentals with which, as a club shareholder, I should probably have been made more familiar. In particular, what exactly is the football club’s role in this BF project? Council minutes state that the planning application is in the name of ILI, but yet this is frequently referred to as “Caley Thistle’s battery farm”. Why should ILI want or need the football club to be involved? If they want to be benefactors or sponsors, why don’t they just give the club some cash? Or is there some fundamental benefit for ILI to have a completely unrelated football club associated with an industrial project that’s a million miles away from football? I’m also curious to know what direct involvement the club would have with the running of the farm if it gets the go ahead? If the answer is “none” then that simply revives the question above - “then why be involved at all ?” If the answer is otherwise then, especially remembering the reputationally damaging demise of the Concert Company, we need to know whether there are any other companies, directly involved or arm’s length, that are being formed here and what are the possible implications for the club? In particular, if the BF were to fail, or to blow up or something, would the club, of which many of us are shareholders, be liable in any way? The way it currently looks to me is - “ILI, which has commercial relationship with club, want to build battery farm on land owned by individuals with club connections and, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, club stands to benefit big time. However club immediately appears to be up to its neck in the planning process for a scheme that seems to be the only financial messiah in town - to the extent that ICT seem to be fronting this industrial project that’s a million miles away from its core business and for reasons that are far from clear.” What am I missing?

I’m not convinced that the quite aggressive approach taken by the Chairman on the front page of today’s Courier is the best way to win friends and influence people when there’s another, much bigger, Council vote to be negotiated next month.

There will doubtless be a few other old buffers on here who will remember the ghastly, clusterboorach that the Council got itself into on a previous occasion when it was involved in a decision that had existential implications for Caley Thistle - namely the £900K grant towards the stadium road in 1995-96. There’s no need to detail the Town Hall obstructiveness,, QCs’ opinions, scandalous rearguard action by Council officials and nitpicking about Dave Stewart’s use of the word “payable” in a motion to the Council that eventually saw IDC go out of existence under an ignominious cloud before the money was paid from the Common Good Fund… but it was desperate stuff. Unfortunately, we now already have a bid to contest a quorate planning decision - which the club manager yesterday, deploying delightful metaphor, eloquently described as trying to keep replaying the game until they get the result they want - and that rearguard action already looks ominous. But what really worries me is that if we thought that the Council back in the 90s was bad…. the current local governance of Inverness is a whole lot worse. History is making me very uneasy about this one.

Could anyone fill in exactly how this Battery Farm plan will operate? Who will manage and operate the facility on a day to day basis? Who will physically oversee construction? Who will ensure that there is a market? Where is the set-up capital coming from? In practical terms, what is the nature of the link between the football club and ILI? What’s in it for ILI? When would funds be expected to arrive with the club? What does the club have to do in order to qualify for revenue from this facility? What are the projected profits? What’s the level of risk? If there are losses, who is liable and what would the implications be for the football club? These are not hostile questions in any way. It’s just that, as a shareholder in ITandCFC, developments over the last week have led me to realise that I know very little about this project, which it’s hoped will revolutionise the football club’s finances.

Everyone will just have to hope that these difficulties are not “terminal”.

So where would this leave the club if the Battery Farm, like the Concert Company, were to go bust? In the case of the Concert Company, the technically separate football club took a large sum for stadium rent before the CC went bust, leaving local traders out of pocket. There is therefore also the concern that the CC’s demise left a lot of bad feeling among the Inverness business community. So what’s the situation in the event of the collapse of the Battery Farm? Also, how much vehicular traffic would a Battery Farm create, and might this, on the already extremely congested SDR, have been a consideration when planning permission was refused?