MACCLESFIELD TOWN have agreed a deal with Cheshire East Council that will see the club owned by members of the community.
The club’s current shareholders will gift their holdings in the Conference Premier outfit to a community owned vehicle that will take control of the club.
All current and former directors have agreed to write off their loans to the club, meaning it will be in a stronger financial position when the community take over.
Cheshire East Council will purchase the freehold on the Moss Rose for £285K and the Silkmen will continue to play there until a new home for the side is built.
Speaking about the agreement, Cheshire East Council Michael Jones said: “Macclesfield Town Football Club is part of our heritage and we should not – and cannot – lose it.
“We are incredibly proud of their achievements and it is unfortunate that they have succumbed to the financial pressures exacerbated by our current economy. But they are not the first football club to run into difficulties.
“It is in times like this that Council’s can and should play a part, after all the club is incredibly important to the town’s identity and adds to the visitor economy enormously, providing much-needed jobs and prosperity.”
Macclesfield Town is already community owned – the shareholders, other than the aforementioned directors and former directors, are members of the community.
So the people who made the decisions to spend more than the club could afford and plunge the club in to debt are proposing to sell the majority shareholding to themselves? Or am I missing something?
Update: It appears the directors and former directors are gifting their shares to the Community Interest Company, not selling them, so my initial understanding and interpretation are a little harsh and not quite correct.
Some of them will however be directors of the CIC so they are in effect gifting the shares to a company that they are then running. This seems a little confusing, so hopefully the fans forum on Thursday will add some clarity.
CIC structure is not true community ownership. Actual, democratise, open community ownership (eg FC United, Lewes, Enfield etc) is where it’s one member, one share, one vote, no matter how much money someone puts in, with a Board wholly elected from those shareholders. What you need is a Community Benefit Society (CBS) structure.
Unfortunately, a CIC structure can be used to simply have all the old faces running a club but maybe with a few extra safeguards. It’s a halfway house fudge.