Port Vale: Club could face legal dispute over Vale Park buildings Port Vale: Club could face legal dispute over Vale Park buildings

PORT Vale could face a legal dispute with their former community trust about the ownership of buildings at Vale Park.

Pete Williams, a trustee of the Port Vale FC Community Trust, told fans that at last night’s Supporters’ Club meeting that he has taken legal advice about the issue.

The trust left Vale Park two years ago following a dispute with football club chairman Norman Smurthwaite who has subsequently set up a new football in the community scheme.

The old community trust have instead set up in Hanley and claim they are still the owners of the buildings at Vale Park which currently house the club shop and the ticket office.

They say they owned the buildings before the football club went into administration in 2012 and, because they are a separate business from the football club, their property was not part of the sale when Smurthwaite and his then business partner Paul Wildes bought the club out of administration later that year.

Smurthwaite has made clear he was not aware of a potential dispute when he bought Port Vale. He says he has researched the issue since he was first made aware of it, but has not seen any proof that the buildings do not belong to the football club.

The land on which the buildings stand belong to the football club and its owner, but the ownership of buildings themselves are in dispute.

Speaking at last night’s supporters’ club meeting, Williams said talks with the chairman have so far failed to resolve the issue.

Williams says he is concerned because more than 300,000 was raised in grants for the building which houses the club shop when it was built in 2007.

He told the meeting that one of the conditions of the grant money was that the buildings should not be for commercial use.

He said: “My research finds that the academy building, the gym above it, the club shop and the ticket office do not belong to Mr Smurthwaite, they belong to the football trust.

“The problem the trustees have got is that within the grant details it says that no commercial activity whatsoever must go on by Port Vale FC in any of the buildings.

“Because the club is up for sale we can’t sit back now. He showed me where it is quite clear that only buildings in the ownership of Valiant 2001 were sold to Alchemy Investments which was the company that Mr Wildes and Smurthwaite bought it under.”

Williams says a solution would be for the Vale chairman to buy the buildings from the community trust so they could return the money raised in grants to central government.

That would be at a cost of more than 300,000 to the Vale chairman and would be a bitter pill because the grants were received five years before he bought the club.

He has also overseen improvements to the buildings since then, including the opening of the new club shop in 2013.