Fulham Football Club

March 2018 – Planning permission granted for the redevelopment of its riverside stand. It also provides for a new public section of the river path to be built over the River Thames. It was agreed the Football Club could use part of Bishops Park as a building site for three years.

Fulham Football Club was granted planning permission for the redevelopment of its riverside stand in March 2018. It raises Craven Cottage’s seating capacity by 4,300 to achieve an overall capacity of 30,000 seats. It also provides for new apartments, new leisure and retail facilities and a new public section of the river walkway. This will be closed on match days but only 2 hours before and 2 hours after an event.  

The Fulham Society considered that the new proposals contained some of the same very undesirable features as the previous scheme, notably the encroachment over the river and the height of the stand. The Club was also given permission to hold the associated non-match day events that had caused local residents considerable concern. The Society had argued that more should be done to address the legitimate concerns of local residents about the adverse impacts of the proposals especially in relation to the impacts on the parks beside the club and on residents in the evening.  

 https://www.fulhamfc.com/stadium-development

Use of Bishops Park

The Council agreed the Football Club could use part of Bishops Park as a building site for three years.  The Fulham Society opposes the use of any park by a private commercial company for their own purposes but we recognised that the Football Club was a special case. We did not, therefore, oppose the proposal as long as strict conditions were met: that it did not set a precedent for future private use in any of Fulham’s parks; the park was fully restored after a maximum period of three years; the park was provided with ring-fenced financial benefits sufficiently large to compensate for this very significant loss of amenity; and that there was full transparency and consultation over how this money is spent. 

The Club has now commenced work and has closed off its construction compound in Bishop’s Park.