Summary of October DTB meeting

DT logoThis month’s Dons Trust Board meeting was held on Thursday 10 October 2013.

With the Club’s ambition to return to a new stadium in Merton gathering momentum following the recent joint Galliard/AFC Wimbledon submission to Merton Council, inevitably most of this month’s meeting focused on that one topic.

The Football Club Board had invited representatives from the stadium architects to the meeting to brief the DT Board on the latest design proposals. Their detailed and highly-professional presentation was followed by an in-depth Q&A session, in which the Board raised a number of design-related and stadium access issues with both the architectural team and Club Chief Executive Erik Samuelson.

For reasons of commercial confidentiality, fans will appreciate that it is not yet possible to share any design details more widely. On behalf of the Dons Trust membership, the Board expressed their overall satisfaction with the progress being made by Erik and the architectural team, and hoped that it would not be too long before the Club’s stadium plans could be shared in detail with all members and supporters.

Erik also confirmed that the Club’s new stadium manifesto ‘Coming Home’, which is a summary of the business plan submitted to Merton Council in late September, would be distributed to fans at the next home match against Accrington Stanley. (This is now available on the DT website).

Erik then presented the monthly Football Club Board, which included a discussion on the forthcoming Academy audit, to be carried out as part of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP). A successful audit will ensure that the Club continues to receive central funding to part-finance our Academy.

Time constraints meant that the item on the 2013 DT Board elections – in particular the feedback from last month’s DT Special General Meeting – could not be discussed in any detail. The Board decided that, since there would be at least one vacancy for a new candidate at the elections (with Nicole Hammond standing down after a successful four years on the DTB), it would continue with the current rules.

A discussion on the future organisational structure relating to the proposed move was also deferred. A separate DTB meeting on that is planned ahead of a wider discussion with the membership on this topic.