MILLWALL have demanded a meeting with Lewisham Council as lease negotiations over The Den drag on and prevent the club moving to the next phase of their regeneration plans.
It is more than three years since an agreement was reached with the Council that saw Millwall stay at their home, after fears the club would be forced out by Lewisham’s plans to compulsorily purchase land around The Den.
And in January of this year, the initial planning application for the New Bermondsey redevelopment was approved. Millwall told Southwark News at the time that they hoped “Lewisham Council can now hasten the finalisation of the lease for land around The Den so that Millwall can be at the heart of these endeavours as promised”.
As well as their plans to redevelop The Den, Millwall are set to submit a planning application this month for a new training ground in Sevenoaks. Lions chief executive Steve Kavanagh has been much more satisfied with how Sevenoaks Council have worked with the club.
“I’ve demanded a meeting with the mayor of Lewisham,” Kavanagh told NewsAtDen this week. “I have expressed in a couple of podcasts I did that we’re very frustrated that the lease negotiations are still ongoing nearly three years later.
“We need the lease to move to the next stage and we’re extremely frustrated that the Council haven’t so far come forward with a deliverable plan that is commercially viable for what is required around here.
“And the speed with which, and the way that Sevenoaks have worked with us, flies in the face of what’s been going on in Lewisham. But hopefully we can get that logjam resolved soon and allow that aspect to move forward as well.
“They [the new training ground and the redevelopment of The Den] are two key components in the long-term viability and sustainability of this club.
“We’re frustrated, we want to get it going. As we’ve seen with Sevenoaks, the way we’ve worked with the Council to get this through to this stage to be ready to go to a planning application shows how eager we are to develop the club and the assets.
“We want to do that around The Den as well and we’re very frustrated it’s taken this long and the Council haven’t so far come up with a commercially viable solution to how we do that from a lease perspective.”
Image: Millwall FC