Update on proposed improvements at Cannon Clarke Stadium @ Twerton Park

Some of you may have spotted that the club recently applied for planning permission to replace the floodlights. This is part of a bigger project that the Club Board have been working on to ensure that the Cannon Clarke Stadium @ Twerton Park can continue to meet the requirements needed to host football matches. The project has identified two areas that are in urgent need of action.

The first is upgrading the floodlights. The two pylons on the south side of the pitch were built in the 1960s and are considered at the end of their life and we are unable to access them for maintenance and repair. They will be replaced with new 20m columns, which will be 8m lower in height than the previous ones. We will also install new bulbs on all the pylons, removing the current Halide lights (which are now difficult to source) and replacing them with new LEDs which will save electricity, be more reliable, and will provide a better and more consistent quality of light. Without doing these works, there is a real possibility that the lights will literally go out meaning we will not be able to host matches.

The second is installing a new drainage system under the pitch following the investigations that we undertook last winter which identified that the system installed when Bristol Rovers played here was failing. Without this, the pitch will deteriorate and could lead to more matches being called off, which in turn impacts the club’s revenue.

For both these projects, we are currently submitting applications for grants that are available through the Football Foundation and the Premier League stadium fund. We anticipate that, if successful, we should be able to fund 70% of the costs through grants. We are considering how to raise the other 30% and will communicate our ideas on this in due course.

We are of course aware that the Supporters’ Society through Sam Dyer have been canvassing supporters’ opinions on how to make the Cannon Clarke Stadium @ Twerton Park better for fans. We welcome this and are hopeful that should we need to fundraise for these two vital projects, we will look to include some of the suggestions that have been proposed.