TWYFORD AVENUE: A DEVELOPING STORY

The Twyford Avenue training ground used to be owned by QPR. On 18 May 2001 a Loftus Road PLC Extraordinary General Meeting was called to consider, amongst other things, an offer from Chris Wright to buy the training ground. The reason he gave for making the offer was to provide Queens Park Rangers with much-needed working capital.

The club - that's the club still owned by Chris Wright at the time - had had Twyford 'independently valued' at £2.5 million, and that's how much Wright offered.

As an accounting mechanism, and to inject some cash into QPR, Wright was to make a payment in the region of £1 million, and the remaining £1.5 million would be used to reduce the amount of money the club already owed him.

On the day of the EGM there was a lot of scepticism amongst shareholders as to whether this really was a good long-term deal for QPR. Twyford Avenue is in a highly desirable residential area, and if housing was ever built on the site its value would far exceed £2.5 million. Moreover, QPR were to become tenants at the ground and would have to pay rent to Wright.

Here the story takes a strange turn. Wright, up on the stage at the EGM, was still insisting the deal was in QPR's best interests. Shareholder Bill Butler therefore asked him to guarantee that if any profits were ever made from Twyford in the future they would be split three ways equally between QPR, Wasps and Wright himself.

Wright began to look rather uneasy and said he could not make such a commitment because the money to buy Twyford was coming from his bank and he would have to check with them first.

'Ring the bank! Ring the bank now!'shouted the shareholders and Wright, by now blushing to his roots, eventually stammered 'Well....actually.....it's not a bank I'm getting the money from.'

What Wright did offer that day, in a public promise, was 10% of any future Twyford profits to QPR. Did he keep that promise? Where is the agreement in black and white? Two years later at the AGM on 1 May 2003 Wright's close friend and chairman of QPR Nick Blackburn promised that a full and open explanation of what would happen to future Twyford development profits would be posted on the club's official website

We're still waiting.

The Land Registry is a government agency that holds details of ownership of land and property. The land register for the Twyford Avenue training ground shows that a company called Sorbon Investment has a charge on the land. Strangely enough, a building company called Michael Shanley Homes Ltd is registered at the same address as Sorbon Investment: 'Michael Shanley Homes, Sorbon, Aylesbury End, Beaconsfield, Bucks'.

Twyford Avenue is in the London Borough of Ealing, and the council is currently preparing its Unitary Development Plan (UDP). As part of this plan it wants to designate the training ground as 'Public and Community Open Space'. If this is agreed, it will scupper any plans to build houses for the next 15 years.

In March and December 2002 a company called RPS Consultants lodged formal objections on behalf of Chris Wright with Ealing's Planning Committee, protesting against the proposed designation of Twyford as 'Public and Community Open Space.' RPS Consultants specialise in planning applications and appeals, and their list of clients includes Michael Shanley Homes.

CARA, the Residents Association local to Twyford Avenue, has told Ealing Council it believes Michael Shanley Homes have made an offer of £1 million to buy a house at 40 Rosemont Road, W3. If this house was bought and demolished it would clear the way for a road to be constructed giving access to future housing built on what is currently the north-east corner of the Twyford Avenue training ground.

In May 2002 Chris Wright was installed as Life Vice President of Queens Park Rangers Football Club by the current QPR board.

Read more at:
CARA - The website of the Creffield Area Residents Association
Plan For The Environment - The London Borough of Ealing's policy statement
Chris Wright/RPS Letter - To LB Ealing objecting to designating the Twyford Avenue site as a PCOS.
CARA Letter - To LB Ealing objecting to possibility of property development at the Twyford Avenue site and the possible purchase of 40 Rosemont Road by Michael Shanley Homes.

This article first appeared on the qpr48-67 website. The site is now sadly closed after the three QPR fans behind it were taken to court by the club for publishing a leaked memo from David Davies to the board of directors.

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