Charlton Athletic fans to be charged for using club’s own ticket office

Darryl Chamberlain1 Comment

Ransom Walk

Update: The club has removed the £2.50 charge following “fan feedback”, but the £3 surcharge for buying in the two hours before kick-off remains.

Football fans who buy their match tickets from Charlton Athletic’s ticket office at The Valley face having to pay an extra £2.50, it has emerged.

The club – run by unpopular Belgian electronics magnate Roland Duchâtelet – has slapped the extra sum onto the cost of each transaction to encourage fans to buy their tickets online instead.

Duchâtelet’s management, led by chief executive Katrien Meire, is also levying a £3 charge on each ticket bought in the two hours before kick-off.

They say supporters can escape the charges by buying in advance and printing their tickets at home, or using a smartphone. Fans can order online and have tickets posted to them for £1, while telephone orders now also cost £2.50.

But fans, who invaded the Valley pitch at the end of last season to protest at the way Duchâtelet and Meire run the Addicks, have complained that the club’s ticketing website is unreliable and does not offer a full range of ticketing options.

The charge also affects casual supporters, such as people who live close to the club who may decide at the last minute to watch a match, or opt to buy in person because it is more convenient than using online methods.

Arrangements for away matches – which are supplied by the host club and cannot be printed at home – are also unclear. The club’s ticket office implied on Twitter this afternoon that the charge would apply for away tickets, but fans could escape the charge by ordering online and then collecting from The Valley. When asked to confirm this, the club did not respond.

It has long been believed that Duchâtelet and Meire are running down the club’s ticket office to persuade fans to switch to online ticketing, saving money and creating a potentially lucrative marketing database. It is already only open to personal callers on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

The club could be in breach of consumer law if it does not offer a way of buying tickets that does not result in an additional booking fee.

Fans uncovered the fiasco today as tickets for the first away match of the club’s League One season, against Bury, went on sale. Many may now just simply bypass Charlton and buy their tickets directly from the Greater Manchester club on 6 August, the day of the match, if they are available there.

Following the club’s relegation to League One, life at The Valley had appeared to be more stable since the appointment of new manager Russell Slade, a reversal of Duchâtelet’s past policy of employing “head coaches” who he was already familiar with.

But season ticket sales are widely believed to be well down on last season as fans boycott the club. Duchâtelet and Meire’s decision to levy extra charges on individual match tickets is expected to further hit attendances at The Valley, which were already set to drop to their smallest level for two decades.

The Coalition Against Roland Duchâtelet campaign group – whose eye-catching stunts included a funeral cortege down Charlton Church Lane to The Valley – is promising more protests in the new season. It is holding a fundraising party at the White Swan in Charlton Village on 23 July, featuring the launch of a specially-brewed ale, Roland’s Ruin.

53 to be fixed: Whitehall bus link restored from 23 July

Darryl Chamberlain

A 53 to Lambeth North

Good news for bus passengers in Charlton, as well as Plumstead, Woolwich, Blackheath and Greenwich – route 53 will finally run to Whitehall again from 23 July.

The daytime service was suddenly cut back to Lambeth North in January 2015 because of major roadworks on Westminster Bridge and, later, at Elephant & Castle.

Now Transport for London has confirmed the full service will be finally restored, 18 months after the original change was made.

The cutback was the subject of a petition from the Charlton Society in May 2015.

A motion was later passed by Greenwich Council on the subject, although it removed credit to the amenity group and inserted criticism of former mayor Boris Johnson.

Open weekend at ‘refreshed’ Charlton Lido

Neil Clasper


Charlton Lido are holding an open weekend on Saturday 23rd  and Sunday 24th of July, with special offers on membership, and a chance for non-members to try out the facilities – including the recently ‘relaunched’ cafe. They’re also looking for local businesses who may wish to take a stall over the weekend.

As an aside, we’d suggest that if Better are now describing the lido as ‘Charlton’s best kept secret’ it might be time for them to do a bit of proper advertising and promotion…

lido

PS. Tried the cafe since it reopened? Tell us what you thought of it in the comments below.

Grow Well, Feel Well Open Day in Maryon Park on Saturday

Darryl Chamberlain

Maryon Park Community Garden

Tim Anderson from Maryon Park Community Garden would like a word…

Maryon Park Community Garden has been chosen to take part in the Capital Growth Grow Well, Feel Well Open Day on Saturday 9th July, from 1pm to 4pm.

The attractions will include: 

• Drop-in Tours and Talks on the health benefits of organic gardening and growing your own food.

• Outdoor Art Taster Workshops at 1.00, 2.00 and 3.00 run by COATS, the Community Outdoor Art Therapy Service. (Early arrival recommended as the maximum number is 8 participants in each session.)

• Refreshments including herb teas.

To find the garden, which is behind the park fencing, enter Maryon Park via the main entrance on Maryon Road, SE7 8DH and walk past the Park Lodge or walk south through the park from the Woolwich Road entrances.

All change by the river as Second Floor Arts becomes Thames-Side Studios

Darryl Chamberlain5 Comments

Second Floor Arts open studios

Second Floor Studios & Arts, the thriving art community on the Charlton/Woolwich border, is now operating under a new identity, with its two directors moving onto a new project in Deptford.

Since opening in 2010, Second Floor has grown to become London’s largest affordable studio space project for artists and makers, with 450 members. Its twice-yearly Open Studios weekends are a highlight of the local calendar.

Now the Warspite Road outfit has been renamed Thames-Side Studios after directors Matthew Wood and Nichole Herbert Wood took out a lease on 75 new studios in the under-construction Deptford Foundry development in Arklow Road, close to the railway junction between Deptford and New Cross stations. The Second Floor name is moving with them, along with the No Format gallery name.

Thames-Side Studios is now in the hands of the building’s freeholder, which says on its website it is “committed to the continuing provision” of spaces for artists. With work on extending the Thames Path past the studios’ front door due to be completed by spring 2017, there’s potential for the site to get even more popular- particularly if the Open Studios weekends continue.

While the whole riverside area is scheduled for redevelopment in the coming years, Greenwich Council has signalled that it wants to see the buildings kept and used by creative industries.

While they’ll still be based reasonably locally, the Second Floor team will be a hard act to follow. With grandiose plans under way for a “creative quarter” in the Royal Arsenal development, their departure across the Lewisham border is a big loss to Greenwich borough as a whole.

Cuts U-turn: Maryon Wilson Animal Park finally set to stay in council hands

Darryl Chamberlain16 Comments

Maryon Wilson Park

Greenwich Council is set to keep control of Maryon Wilson Animal Park, finally abandoning plans to spin the centre off into a charitable trust and ending five years of uncertainty about its future.

The council first announced plans to scrap the park’s budget in December 2010, with a view to looking for sponsorship.

After widespread protests, the council agreed to hand over management to a trust, Maryon Wilson Animal Park Ltd (MWAP) which would raise funds and operate the park.

But the trust has struggled to raise the funds needed to take on the park – believed to be about £100,000 per year. Last year, the Friends of Maryon and Maryon Wilson Parks published published an open letter to council leader Denise Hyland asking for her to reconsider the decision to spin the centre off, made by her predecessor Chris Roberts.

While the council has deleted £42,350 – the cost of a stockman, vet fees and animal feed – from its parks budget, it has continued to run the park in the meantime, with last year’s running costs put at £70,000.

Now, if the council’s cabinet agrees on Wednesday, it will keep control of the park, and MWAP will become a Friends group, raising money and supplying volunteers – just as it proposed in last year’s open letter.

The council says it will hold a “complete review of revenue and capital expenditure” on the site and look to “reduce costs incrementally”.

Charlton Lido: summer swimming season starts soon

Neil Clasper


Good news for swimmers: Charlton Lido’s summer season starts on Tuesday 31st of May, with extended opening hours for the pool.

The new timetable will be:

Monday: 6.30am-8pm

Tuesday – Friday: 7am-8pm

Weekends: 9am-5pm

The main changes from the current timetable are an earlier start on Mondays, and all-day opening on Thursdays and Fridays. This timetable will run to September when it will be ‘reviewed’.

The cafe (closed for refurbishment since October last year) is due to re-open next Tuesday, and will be open 9-5pm through the week. We assume this also means that the sun terraces will re-open.

Finally, there’s a Customer Forum for members taking place this Thursday evening (May 26th). We’ve heard of members who’ve not received the email that was sent out last week and – as with other events at the lido – there’s been no mention of it on Better’s website. It may be too later to register, but if you’re a member and want to apply (or get on the list for future customer meetings) we suggest dropping a line to charltonlido [@] gll.org.