New Petitions

Thank you very much for inviting us. Bill Mann will say something first. I do not think that he will mind my saying that he is a veteran campaigner for sports in Scotland.

I have been involved in sport and sports clubs virtually all my life as a player, a supporter—in different ways—an administrator and an official. Over the past couple of decades, I have been an active campaigner with others on behalf of amateur sports clubs, as has just been mentioned. We have had some success in obtaining generous non-domestic rates relief for our clubs and in forcing HM Customs and Excise to admit that it was acting illegally in charging VAT on club subscriptions—payments were backdated seven years. Currently, I am in correspondence with the Chancellor of the Exchequer; I am trying to convince him to extend the tax benefits that he introduced three years ago that are given to a new category of amateur sports clubs—community amateur sports clubs, or CASCs.Our amateur sports clubs are an important part of this country's fabric. Without them, the Scottish Executive and local authorities would require to provide facilities at enormous expense. They are an asset to the communities in which they are situated and they keep our children off the streets and out of too much mischief making. They help to keep children fit and not obese, which I know is a great concern for all committee members. Everything should be done to preserve amateur sports clubs for the sake of the clubs and for children.Without non-domestic rates and VAT relief, many clubs would have closed years ago. However, there is now another threat to the existence of some clubs. Many sports clubs are situated in prime sites that are attractive to property developers, who are targeting those clubs and offering vast sums for their valuable land. I have no objection to amateur sports clubs selling their land under certain circumstances; for example, if all the proceeds of the sale are used to create improved facilities or to improve the remaining existing facilities.However, I object to current members of clubs who are only birds of passage and should regard themselves as trustees for future generations selling their clubs' assets and pocketing the proceeds. I hope that committee members object to that, too. Many clubs were established many moons ago by philanthropic individuals who gave their land for nothing or next to nothing and who developed facilities without any thought of financial gain, but times have—sadly—changed. Nowadays, greedy and selfish people who have put little or nothing into their clubs but just happen to be members at a given time are selling their clubs for personal gain. That is reprehensible and immoral and must be stopped.Elaine Black, who is the secretary of the Dowanhill residents association, will tell the committee about one deplorable example.

I will cite a classic case of what is happening in Scotland. I live 40m from Dowanhill lawn tennis club, which is in the west end of Glasgow. I have been a member of sports clubs all my life and I have two children who play tennis to a high standard. It is a great sadness that we cannot play tennis as a family at our home club.We believe that about five years ago, Dowanhill lawn tennis club and the bowling club opposite—one of the prettiest in Glasgow—were approached by a developer who was on a fishing trip for prime land. A year later, the tennis club closed its full membership in order to counter carpetbaggers. Members have been led to believe that the land that club trustees bought in 1950 for £250 is now worth £6 million and that each full member is in line for a £100,000 windfall.There are currently 57 members at Dowanhill, compared with 200 members 10 years ago. In response to a recent Radio Scotland programme in which Bill Mann appeared, the club claimed that there was no demand for tennis in the area and that the membership was aging. That situation has clearly been artificially engendered. The Dowanhill courts are fully occupied three times a week by students from the University of Glasgow who want to continue playing there because they are the only courts that are close enough to the university for them to be able to play. The courts are also used—or have been in the past—by members of Western tennis club, which would like to continue using them for its overflow because it is a highly successful club. The Western baths club wrote in 2002 and 2003 requesting use of the Dowanhill courts for its membership, but was refused. In 2004, when the Dowanhill club was put on the market, the Western baths club offered to buy it but received no response.When I moved into Dowanhill and applied to join the club, a letter arrived on Glasgow fair Saturday, just as I was going on holiday, inviting me for an interview that Tuesday to consider whether I was suitable for temporary membership of the club—in other words, membership with no voting rights. It was impossible to attend that interview and, with no forwarding address, impossible to reply to the letter. That is an example of the kind of tactics that clubs can employ to enforce failing membership.As anyone who is involved in sport knows, clubs go through cycles of success and mediocrity as the old order fades and new blood comes in. If developers approach clubs during transitional periods, the clubs can easily be encouraged to fail. Make no mistake, if the money that was accrued by the sale of Dowanhill tennis club was going back into tennis locally and not into members' pockets, the site would not be on the market today.How can we save Dowanhill tennis club? As a community, we have been unbelievably fortunate to have among our number David Walker, who is a former regius professor of law at the University of Glasgow; Sheena Stark, who is an advocate; Ewan Kennedy, who is a solicitor; and one full member of the club who is bravely willing to put his name to any legal action. Even with their input, we are battling the odds. We will have to go the sheriff court to obtain information on various club constitutions, which we suspect have been altered and perhaps even lost. We will have to raise £15,000 to force the club to judicial review and we run the risk of going up against a wealthy developer. We are considering doing that only because of the confidence that we have in the people whom I have mentioned. How many other communities will be that lucky? That is why Dowanhill residents back the petitions. Something must be done to cut the link between the out-of-date laws, rules and regulations that govern small amateur sports clubs and the greed of today's society, which allows people who are only passing through and have contributed little apart from their subscriptions to make a private profit from the destruction of badly needed sports facilities that can play a major part in our children's future health and well-being.

I have lived all my life in the west end of Glasgow and I work as a solicitor with my own firm in the city centre. A year ago, I set up the Glasgow green space trust to campaign to save sports grounds from being lost to the community. In the city of Glasgow, there are about 800 small clubs, which give opportunities for recreation and relaxation. In the case notes, we have given two examples of sites that are under threat, but we know of many others. In the west end, people are vigilant and there are lots of professional skills on hand, but it is obvious that that is not always so. In our two case studies, the local residents were lucky to find out in advance that clubs wanted to sell the sites. Usually, the matter has advanced to the planning stage before the community gets to know about it.National planning policy guidelines strongly support the preservation of urban open space, and sites that are dedicated to that purpose enjoy protection under the major cities' structure plans. The problem is that the pickings from such level, unpolluted sites in residential areas encourage developers to hire the skills that are needed to get through the guidelines.The cases that we have presented are blatant examples of attempts to make a planning case. As an aside, that planning case is encouraged by the policies in some cities whereby a promise that some of the proceeds will go to sports facilities or clubs, sometimes miles away, is sufficient to obtain planning consent.Accordingly, PE821, which I regard as our primary petition although it appears second on the agenda, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to ensure that planning applications are called in for consideration in all such cases. In a case where a club genuinely needs the cash to survive, we suggest that it can easily give an undertaking to use the sale proceeds for the purpose of the sport. Consent was given recently on that basis at Woodend in Glasgow and we made a deliberate decision not to object.Our other petition, PE817, attempts to address the legal aspect. We are not asking you to change the substance of the law in any way. The legal structures of clubs are so diverse that no single change would help. We seek to force all clubs that claim to be in difficulties to consult openly. In virtually every case, club land was purchased by public subscription or donated by well-meaning individuals for the public good. It was rarely contemplated that future generations would be greedy.Dowanhill is an example of a case in which there are legal protections. The site was conveyed into trust for the purpose of promoting tennis in the area and it was expressly declared in the deeds that no individual would ever take a personal profit. That sounds pretty watertight, but the club quietly purported to change its rules a couple of years ago to cancel that provision. When we complain, we are described as carpetbaggers. We have been advised that what the club has done amounts to an actionable breach of trust. It also seems, on good case authority, that such action can be taken by non-members as well as by disaffected members. You have heard that one disaffected member is backing us, but obviously that requires public spirit and money.Because of the diversity of club structures we cannot suggest a single solution that will fit all cases. The common thread is that the assets, which are the legacy of previous generations, belong morally and often legally to the community. The forcing of openness, by way of public consultation, will have two benefits. First, it will allow the local community to rally round with support and prevent fraudulent cases from being made to the planners. Secondly, it will help to expose breaches of legal trust when they occur and it will enable concerned people to take the necessary action.

I should say that we deliberately decided to submit two petitions to enable the committee to have the maximum possible flexibility in dealing with the problem.

Yes. We had a fantastic response from the National Playing Fields Association, which is backing us enormously. In fact, it asked me to attend its conference next Friday, at which Mike Watson will, I believe, be one of the speakers. Thus far, we have been relatively unsuccessful in recruiting support from sportscotland, but we have lobbied it vigorously.

Local representatives of Tennis Scotland have given verbal support to the concept that the constitutions of member clubs should state that the club cannot be sold for profit. However, that could be only a voluntary arrangement.

The west of Scotland Tennis Scotland representative has attended several of our meetings and has been very supportive. There is now some awareness of the issue.

I stress that we have highlighted the two clubs to illustrate the problem. Although we are determined to use all our ingenuity and all the funds that we can raise to fight both cases locally, we have lodged the petition not to save those particular clubs but to highlight a national situation.The situation for both clubs is desperately urgent. In fact, the fate of the two clubs has become inextricably linked. As we say in the case notes, the property developer that has apparently made a conditional contract to buy Dowanhill tennis club has offered to bankroll the Partickhill club to make a planning case. Therefore, the two clubs have been put in the same situation since we started our separate campaigns.The matter is urgent, but we lodged the petition because it identifies what is a national, rather than a purely local issue.

We have had informal indications from the council that it might not look favourably on the application for the Dowanhill club. However, the trouble is that the club is dying and it may be almost dead by the time that the application reaches the planning stage. Once a club has been approached by a developer, it is extremely hard to pull back the situation. In the long term, if the planning application were called in, it would encourage everyone to view such clubs as community assets that are not for sale. However, in the short term, although the calling in of those applications would be good news, it would still come rather late for the two clubs.

I understand that no developer has actually spoken to Glasgow City Council's planning department about the issue in the past 12 months. That may be something to do with our campaign. Perhaps developers are keeping quiet for the time being.

From the community point of view, if a development gets as far as the planning application stage, support for legal action disappears. Once a developer arrives formally on the scene, people are terrified of taking an action to court. If we are to try and stop the development, our community has quite a tight timescale in which to do so.

John Scott mentioned sportscotland. Outwith the action that we have taken in submitting the petition, we think that we should ask sportscotland, the lottery or any other body that makes grants to clubs to force clubs to change their rules so that the proceeds of a sale cannot be distributed to members. There is a precedent for that. Earlier, I mentioned the community amateur sports clubs, which have had to change their constitutions in order to get certain tax relief. So far, about 100 CASCs in Scotland have done so.I mentioned earlier my involvement in the campaign to save clubs from paying rates. As a result of the campaign, no club in Scotland without a bar pays a halfpenny in rates and most of the others get very good rebates. I find it hard to believe that I am saying these words, but those rates rebates should be withdrawn from clubs that are not prepared to change their rules in respect of selling their grounds. I think that most clubs would be prepared to do so, as the members of most clubs do not anticipate such sales. If the rules were irrevocably changed, clubs that left open the option of selling would be stopped from doing so in 20, 30 or 40 years time. As I said, when the Chancellor made the CASCs change their rules in order to get tax benefits, a precedent was set.

A solicitor would be able to tell you that, but I think that it is correct to say that the members do not own their clubs.

The traditional set-up of the clubs is that the assets are legally owned by trustees, which means that the assets are held in trusts that contain purposes. As I said in my opening statement, the problem stems from the fact that the people who originally endowed these clubs did not think that future generations would be so greedy. We gave the committee two illustrations: Partickhill and Dowanhill. Partickhill, which was set up in 1905 and celebrates its centenary this year, has no trust purposes that we could find. Dowanhill was set up in 1950, by which time people were perhaps more cynical. We have therefore found positive and negative trust purposes: the positive being to support the playing of tennis in Dowanhill and the negative to prohibit personal benefit to any member.Legally, the concept of trusts in Scotland is quite complicated. A trust has a body of trustees—in some institutions, a corporation like the Bank of Scotland might be a trustee—and it is the body that holds the legal title. The trustees would be in breach of trust if they were to allow a sell-off. However, if the sell-off happens under cover, because no one tells anyone what is going on, the community loses out.With the help of our professor friend, we identified historical precedents. For example, we have found that in 1825, a fund was endowed to supply a school for poor children—I think in Newton Stewart—called the ragged school. The trustees decided not to bother spending the money on that purpose, but the parents of the ragged children got their act together, went to the Court of Session and successfully forced the trustees to spend the money on the ragged school.If our ancestors were able to get their act together in that way, without the benefit of legal aid or whatever, we should be able to do so too. People have to know what is going on, however. Although the subject is complicated, given the appropriate circumstances, something similar to what was done by the parents of the ragged children could be done today. Dowanhill is a classic case of such circumstances.

Yes, we believe that there has been a breach of trust. We have great difficulty in getting information, but someone kindly posted us a copy of the constitution. Then, a couple of years ago, we got hold of a very strange little document that purported to be an amendment to the constitution. We think that that amendment was itself unconstitutional, because it abolished the provision that no one would take a personal benefit.We believe that we have an authentic copy of the original constitution, and we think that, in denying people who are genuinely interested in playing tennis in that clearly defined geographical area, the club is in breach of trust. We have been so advised by two separate learned counsel—one of them a professor friend and the other a practising counsel.The difficulty with all such matters is how ordinary people can get their act together to mobilise and how they can get information. It has occurred to me that, under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, Scottish ministers might consider designating certain clubs. That would not apply to the David Lloyd sort of proprietary club, but to traditional clubs. Scottish ministers could designate such clubs as public bodies. I do not know, but I believe that a public body does not have to be owned by the taxpayer but can be in the nature of a utility or, possibly, a public club.

You have to remember that many members of clubs know nothing about trust law so they will not have realised that they might be breaking it. Therefore, when a club folds and is sold, that is it and nobody knows anything more about it.When clubs close their membership, they are really constructing a planning argument. When the issue comes to the planning committee in Glasgow City Council, people can say, "This is our membership. We are dying and don't have any grounds to carry on as a club." That, in effect, is what they are doing. When I first moved into the area, I was told: "Hurry up and join Dowanhill, because the rumour is that they're going to close the membership." There has therefore been quite a long-term plan to do exactly what has been done, so that people can argue that the club is dying.

Carpetbagging.

I think that we agree. Sports come and go. Just because one sport was popular 100 years ago, that does not mean that it is popular today. About 100 years ago, cricket was a major sport in Scotland. The first football match between Scotland and England was played at Hampden Crescent, because the biggest arena at that time was the cricket ground—

We do not want to lose the open space, which could be used for other sports.

The club plays a large role in the community. For anyone who does not know the area, I should say that housing is clustered around the central gardens, bowling clubs and tennis courts—as is the case in Edinburgh. A lot of the elderly residents remember making cakes for the tennis club, the residents association has meetings there and it is all part and parcel of the community. I think that everyone agrees that the need for that kind of community facility is coming back to our cities. On the face of it, the idea of moving the tennis to Partickhill—whose three courts, incidentally, have been derelict for 10 years, during which time tennis has not been played there—might look sensible, and people would say, "Well, it's only a mile and a half or two miles away." However, Partickhill is a distinct community in itself, which also clusters round its bowling club and its tennis courts. Aside from sport, those facilities have a role in the community. Many of the local schools do not have good sports facilities and no effort has ever been made to provide them. For example, the back tennis court at Dowanhill could quite easily be made into a five-a-side pitch for local schools to use during the week.

I can answer that. The Dowanhill club received sportscotland funding. In fact, it has four tennis courts that have all-weather surfaces and lighting. To get that funding, I believe that it made a case that access would be given to Glasgow University. The people who play there are mainly Glasgow University students, who are not allowed to join as members. In fact, the club champion is not allowed to be a member; he forgot to pay his subscription so they threw him out. They let him play, but they do not let him be a member. The Partickhill club deliberately refused to apply for funding. It was offered help by the Western tennis and fitness club, which is local, but it refused that assistance. The Western club has a six-month waiting list and hundreds of people wanting to play tennis. The other strange thing about Partickhill is that the club applied to Historic Scotland for a grant for the club house, but when it realised that the building would have to be listed, it wrote back to say that it did not want the grant. It was actually given the money and rejected it. One can only conclude from that, and from the fact that it then closed the membership list, that there is a definite policy at the club. I recruited 110 new members for Partickhill, but they are not given votes or any interest in the assets. When the annual general meeting took place recently, the club did not tell anyone that it was happening and the meeting took place behind closed doors. An important point was made earlier about making a planning case. At Newlands on the south side of Glasgow, the club supports the developer. That is what happens. The developer comes firing in and the club makes the case for the developer. The Newlands club said that new people who wanted to join the club were interested only in drinking. Apparently, no drinking normally goes on in sports clubs and old-fashioned bowling clubs. It was said that the new members were not seriously interested in the sport, and Glasgow City Council bought that argument and gave planning consent. At Kings Park on the south side, there are 50 members, and Dickie & Moore is applying for only nine flats. The 50 members get £8,000 each. It is not too difficult to make a planning case.

Unfortunately, a sports club cannot be a charitable organisation.

They do, but sports clubs cannot be charities.

I think that if an organisation is a trust, the money cannot go to the trustees.

The difficulty is that our trust law is not statutory. Charity law is all tied up with income tax and tax relief. The trusts that I am talking about pre-date income tax. Trust law in Scotland is common law—it is case law—and contains nothing that is of any help. If the documents have not been properly drawn up, they might have been copied from ones that people drew up for nothing.

When we started out, we wanted to go for the former. We would love there to be a piece of legislation that provided that, in all such cases, no one can ever take a personal benefit because we believe that that was the original intention. However, we do not want to come here and be seen as expropriators.

May I interrupt with important information?

The suggestion is a short-term measure, because changing trust law will take quite a while. Planning applications could be called in tomorrow.