After the Barrow game, we emailed fans and asked for feedback on their match experience.
We had over 800 fans get back to us, which is a fantastic response rate!
From the replies the main issues were:
- Car parking
- West Stand toilets
- Turnstiles
- Vehicle egress
- East Stand catering service
- PA system
CEO Nigel Clibbens has provided an update on key points raised by fans:
CAR PARKING
Parking is a topic we receive the most fan comments on at the current time, so rest assured it is at the forefront of our minds.
Even last year we had challenges. On occasions we were unable to allow fans who had paid with season-long permits to park on a matchday due to ground conditions being unusable. This resulted in complaints. We needed to learn from that.
Additionally, recent developments at Brunton Park are presenting a number of fresh issues:
Current building work means large areas previously used by supporters to park, must now be used for short-term storage of building equipment, materials and items to be disposed of.
The huge success and growth of the Fan Zone has taken up car park space and reduced capacity on the West side – I know some fans think we should have kept car parking instead.
More club staff (as the club grows), more catering staff (due to catering growth and the new East Stand development), more stewarding staff (due to growing attendances) all require more parking space. We have to prioritise people working on matchday.
The aborted attempt to create football training space has left us with no training space and now unusable space previously used for cars. We cannot even attempt to rectify this for at least six months.
As we currently stand, we don’t have the necessary parking space for all the club’s own matchday needs. We are being forced to use areas to park which are very vulnerable to the weather and which quickly become unusable due to rain.
This all means there is less and less scope for guaranteed public fan parking on a matchday.
In this context it is impossible to offer season ticket parking to fans for the foreseeable future.
We are looking at each match to assess what space we have, once all the needs are identified for that individual game.
If it looks like we have capacity, and the weather is favourable we are trying our best to offer match parking for fans on a first come, first served basis. If the weather is poor, we can not offer guarantees. We have to leave the decision until matchday as overnight rain can take out spaces.
As we get into the winter, the position will get more difficult too, but at the same time we should see more space as the building work completes.
We all understand fans who are used to parking close to the ground for convenience and have done so for many years with annual car park season-long passes, and now they cannot.
We also know some infirm and less mobile fans face particular problems and this hinders them coming to games at all.
We are taking steps to try and increase usable car parking space on-site, but this will take time to come and we are restricted by the Environment Agency as to work we can do in areas inside the flood defences.
We ask fans to check club media on the morning of a matchday for car park news.
WEST STAND TOILETS
As we improve parts of the stadium, it exposes and spotlights more than ever, the issues and faults everywhere else which are still countless. The toilets and drainage and entire water and plumbing system on the West Stand (especially upper floor) is a prime example.
Toilet issues are numerous and frequent. The repair parts are unavailable and we can’t fix them fast enough to keep up with new faults. The solution is total replacement.
The boilers fail all the time leading to no hot water and some boilers are housed in cubicles which is unsafe so the cubicles have to be locked out of use.
The water pressure entering the site on the West side isn’t sufficient enough to work the number of toilets we have and cope with demand at pressure points like half-time. Pressure booster tanks are required everywhere. Finally the drainage outside is failing.
We have faced these issues on the ground floor in the new dressing room area and it was costly and time consuming to fix one small area. The top floor will be similar but many times over.
We are trying our best, but I fully understand in the interim from a fans point of view this explanation doesn’t make things any better.
I apologise that fans have to endure it. I wish you didn’t. I don’t want unhappy fans. I fully understand improvements in one part of the stadium (like WRE) are meaningless to fans elsewhere (like West Stand) and elements like West Stand toilets are still from the 1970s and don’t work properly. Hence all the complaints and adverse feedback.
Chairman Tom Piatak was questioned on toilets at last week’s CUST fan meeting so please rest assured he knows supporters’ views.
Our plan is to demolish each toilet room on the first floor, rebuild and replumb along the West Stand second floor, where it is cost effective. We will be starting at Foxy’s, then D, C, B and A Stand. Plans are being drawn up. This will take some time and a lot of money. For the other toilets where a full rebuild is not cost effective, we will replace individual toilets.
TURNSTILES
We did get caught out with the number of turnstiles we had open, but we deployed office staff to Paddock North and South to help with scanning entry to the Paddock. We will ensure more turnstiles are open and monitor entry queues earlier to ensure we can respond to any entrances that need extra scanning resources.
VEHICLE EGRESS
We had a number of concerns raised about vehicle movement at the end of the match. We understand and completely agree with these concerns. We have a traffic management plan in place now which will see stewarding staff stopping any vehicle movement towards the south of the stadium. All vehicles will be guided to exit southwards via Stoneyholme until the stadium is clear of pedestrian traffic.
EAST STAND CATERING SERVICE
There were some issues with equipment on the day of the Barrow game, which the club were not aware of until later on. On top of this a number of issues were raised with speed of service, and half-time orders. We have raised this with the catering staff and have asked them to have more staff in the concourse facilities and ensure speed of service is improved. We have asked them to provide a specific supervisor for the concourse so they are in place to oversee the issues that have been raised and ensure there is a reaction to any issues arising.
PA SYSTEM
The tannoy system inside the stadium bowl is problematic, and difficult to make significant changes to within the season; this is on the project list for the longer term (close season '25).
