Thetownend.com

@Michael_Benke: It is believed Swindon FC owe Wiltshire Police in the region of £30,000 for the policing of games, stretching back 3 or 4 matches.

@Michael_Benke: A spokesperson for the police confirmed talks were ongoing to get the money.

@RobMurphyitv: @wiltshirepolice warns @Official_STFC it may withdraw policing if the club doesn't pay its bills. @itvwestcountry

@RobMurphyitv: @itvwestcountry @itvmeridian understand the club owes tens of thousands of pounds for policing the last three games.

@RobMurphyitv: @Wiltshirepolice: "Police remain in discussion with Swindon Town Football Club regarding unpaid funds..."

@RobMurphyitv: “...We are hopeful that this situation will be resolved as soon as possible."

Oh deep joy.

So last month then?

They can wait, just like everyone else in business has to.

(Nb. There may well be more to it than that, who knows.)

Surprised we have any coppers in the ground as those we have to pay for.
Outside the ground isnt the clubs duty to pay ( tis how Leeds got over 1mill back from the yorkshire constabulary last season )
Not often you see a copper inside stadia these days - usually stewards only

From 4 home games last season.

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/11407096.STFC_owe_Wiltshire_Police___30k/?ref=var_0

10 grand a game FFS?

Tell them to do one

.

There were a few games last season when the police seemed to call the artillary out when there was no need to.

What are they expecting at games, murder by numbers? They really are the king of pain. I'd make em do it for peanuts.  ;)

 £7,000 less than the amount we owed the last time we were forced into admin...taking account of inflation, I reckon that's about 10 grand of debt to play with, before the AA is called in.

 Here's hoping for a plum draw tonight....

You just can't help yourself, can you?

True, I like to express my opinions on STFC, on an open forum for expressing one's opinions on STFC. 

With nutty geezers like Spencer White and Crispy in our midst, I'm suprised it's only £10K per game

No shit!

It's quite common for the police to be the last to be paid. Wilts police just forcing our hand no doubt

I guess they don't know how lucky they are, what with not having to wait for 50 years like Jed found some other poor souls did ...

Fucking waste of money.

Does it include friendlies?

If it doesn't include friendlies, meaning the bill from the last 2 home games from last season had not been paid yet, the I can understand why the old bill are a tad miffed.

If it does include friendlies, meaning the bill is only 15 days outstanding, then somebody in blue is being a bit of a cunt.

I demand someone talks about football and not the rozzers and pa systems! What next, the burgers taste like feet?

Why not try the match day threads or transfer rumours threads?

Unless you thought we were getting sting on trial to play up front?

My burger was disgusting on Saturday. Dryer than a nuns front bottom

Police not paid, no PA system, and Michael Smith suddenly attracting attention and Cooper talking of "knocking up his price". Doom, deja vu, administration and doom.

It is somewhat concerning

I can't believe this is a 15 day old debt. Nobody calls in after 15 days.

The Adver have said its from four games last season.

Doesnt (spolling) the tax payer pay for all this police interceptor/football intelligence mallarky ?

Cant beat experience.

Interesting to see the 'fall out' from this. 'On any other day' it would cost the club much less. Still, you can't argue with the 'low life' police, there's 'nothing achieving'. No doubt Power will be 'driven to tears' but in the end 'truth hits everybody' even if he 'can't stand losing'.

I have experience with those wankers .... they lie and they lie a lot.

Probably sent in a bill saying we had 40 coppers at the Rotherham game when there was 4.

Lots of them are the most dishonest, bastards you ever have the privilege to meet.

In my former life I had to work a lot with the lying shits.

Were you a burglar?

Almost certainly this delay is down to the pissing about with the court case.

I'm sure it'll be sorted soon and is more than likely a non-issue.

TBH 30 grand isn't that much.

As I said elsewhere the Brighton cup game will pay this and the tannoy cost off.

Got a feeling that the club pay all police costs - whether inside or outside the ground.

And it is up to them how many Peelers they deploy.

Like writing a blank cheque to yourself

If we were that desperate for money then Michael Smith would have gone to Coventry. I know they deny making a bid, but there must have been some interest for them to know our valuation of him.

As others have suggested, I'm guessing it's a dispute over the costs. In that regard they have us by the danglies really. It's unfair but I suspect that there is bugger all we can do about it.

I believe clubs pay for any policing inside the ground and on immediately adjacent property under their control
As I posted earlier Leeds got £1million back from west Yorks police from being charged to police areas outside of ground not under their control.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-21699007

£7500 per game seems excessive considering the low numbers of coppers you actually see around the CG on matchdays

 

I saw 4 in one place on Saturday, 2 of which were PCSO's, not including the couple I saw on the County Road post-match who, as the old bill buggered off about 10m before the end of the match, could well have been the same ones.

You should have complained to them about that tractor  :)

This from a serving Merseyside copper: football matches are one of the few ways desk-bound coppers - statistics, admin, those sort of jobs - can get out and act like 'proper' cops. Plus it's a way of getting overtime.

Hence the reason football cops can be seen to act like knobs with over the top policing, creating and 'solving' issues where none exist. The only good thing to come from this is that the rest of the force think they're knobs too.

I think the clubs decide at the start of the season along with the 'safety' committee which games are high profile and which games would and would not require a police presence.  I think stfc for a long time have tried to have less coppers by having more stewards on matchdays.

:clap:

I did edit by post, maybe I should have left it.
Risk Assessment use to be my game and unfortunately I had to deal a lot with plod.

Mind you, with the information I obtained whilst doing my job, well say no more.
 ;)

Apparenty we have paid some money to the old bill and are talking to them about paying the rest according to the sam morshead wannabe on twitter :>) (Andrew Steele Davis)

I bloody should have too, what an eejit.

People could get moved on saturday then.

http://m.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/11417360.Swindon_Town_face___28k_bill_to_fix_sound/?ref=fbshr

Worse case. But it won't come to that I'm sure.

Thank god. I've barely slept since I heard the potentially fatal news of how the PA's gone from indecipherable to silent.

So, reading that, someone grassed the club up to the council.
Nice of them

I reckon it was Ronnie :D

Ronnie the snitch..

On that note did anyone ever understand what the heck the "lucky boom-boom down" in Informer was on about.

I'd awake in a cold sweat, having one moment of fleeting clarity in an otherwise tepid existence, finding myself shouting the alarm noise, singing Glad all Over, or mumbling an indecipherable annnoucnement about someone needing to move their car. Nothing could help me, save for the return of our PA. Wherefore art thou PA, why hast thou forsaken us in our time of need?

All joking aside, this is not good....I've been saying for a while the club off the pitch looks a bit rudderless, and this just emphasises the point...I've no doubt SBC will go over the top, and maybe start to think about the Safety Certificate.

We could win the Premier League, get taken over by a rich Saudi who, for some reason, is a massive Swindon Town fan and invests £7Bn and you'd STILL find something that was 'not good' or 'worrying'.

Would a few bods with megaphones suffice?  :director:

(http://www.keithvassallo.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/doomed.jpg)

This will get sorted. Like everything else. What the delay is, probably, is that it's doubtless an ancient system that will take some time to get quotes for and rectify. Anyone who's had any kind of experience with wiring in older places will understand that.

Nice snap of Reg there, Honkytonk.   :)

It's what you have the close season for....do a bit of work on the pitch, and tart up the ground, lick of paint, check the safety requirements are up to speed, change bulbs in floodlights etc.  It's fairly obvious some of this hasn't happened...however you want to dress it up, it's not good.

I actually agree with Reg it is a bit embarrassing tbh

You shouldn't be embarrassed agreeing with me DRS  :)

I could never understand what was being said on the tannoy when it "worked".

I sort of agree with Reg as well I find it a bit odd that we cannot pay a bill of 30k to the old bill in one lump sum if money is that tight then a dip in attendances could see us having to sell an asset and we dont have many of those.

Fortunately / unfortunately, we do have a few assets in the first team: Luongo, Wes, Thompsons, Smith. If any of them do go, I hope it is because of an out of this world offer rather than a Black-Jed fire sale.

So when's the first "pfa paid the wages this month" story in the adver then ?!

Yeah but unlikely to be sorted in the close season if you don't know if you own the club.

No idea if we have the cash or not, however imagine that power would not have been inclined to pay these bills and the Jed waltz back in.

The court case was sorted 7 weeks ago...OK, I think we know that we're brassic, nothing new really, but we also know how that can undermine things on the park rapidly. These little smoke signals coming from the club are bound to give rise to concern as to where we're heading.

I'm not sure how much longer the he didn't know who owned the club line can keep being used to be honest.

So the PA system is fucked,  as is the scoreboard and half the floodlights don't work. On the flip side is there anything left that can go wrong?

We all get AIDS from the catering

Agree, but that's been sorted for a while and since then only a proportion of the amount owing has been paid to the Police.  The bill is only going to increase as this season's policing gets added to it.

It's not good.

HELL IN A HANDCART!!! AND THERE'S NO BRAKES!!!

(Although I do kind of agree, it's a bit tinpot, at best)

Could be disputing the bill for all we know.

For the coppers maybe, but folks are now talking more about the PA not being sorted and so (apparently) putting the safety cert at risk. Which should have been sorted out over the summer.

From experience I imagine they are still waiting for an electrician to turn up when they promise to look at the PA.

Expect a post in the Q&A section on here shortly, does anyone know a reliable PA engineer in the Swindon area.

Yes. Paul Bullimore is your man.

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/paul-bullimore/2b/521/34b