Kent Chief Executive Jamie Clifford has defended the club’s plans to revamp the Woolley Stand in difficult financial times.

The club have announced their long term desire to demolish the existing structure and replace it with something fit for the 21st century.

The original structure was constructed in 1927 with a renovation taking place in 1972, but some forty years on Kent have decided it is time to explore the option of replacing it with something more substantial.

A launch lunch for the ambitious project has been planned for January 17th next year with former Kent captain Matthew Fleming having been named as patron of the Woolley appeal.

Kent are hoping the project will qualify for new capital project grants, announced by the England and Wales Cricket Board and have enlisted the support of Amanda Cottrell, chairman of Canterbury based Visit Kent to spread the word to Kent’s businesses.

With the club still in talks with various partners about the proposed hotel development at the St Lawrence Ground, Chief Executive Jamie Clifford has backed the plan to replace the Woolley Stand despite the economic environment in which we live in:

“It’s an ambitious project, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ambition. The Woolley Stand has been here for a long time and it has various shortcomings. None more so than the fact it won’t stand for the next eighty years.”

“It’s done well to get to where it has so far, but we have got to be realisitic. A tart up and a repaint will be selling ourselves short.”

“Therefore, we need to be ambitious and put something in its’ place that will stand for at least the next eighty years.”

“I think with our infrastucture, we have tried to do things that will be here for the long term. Getting £4 million is a hugely ambitious target, but one I am quite optimistic about fulfiling.”

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but we are going to go hard and fast at trying to raise the funds that leaves us with something that really improves the ground.”

“The improvements we have made so far have been great, but there is the desire now to go to the next step.”

To raise around £4 million, Kent have enlisted the support of former Surrey Chief Executive Paul Sheldon who is consulting with various people to see how the project can be funded.

One option has been to see if the new facility can incorporate a new Kent Sports hub and that is being explored as it can be a way of attracting funding from bodies such as Sport England and the National Lottery.

However, Clifford was keen to stress that the overiding priority for everyone at Kent was to make sure spectators needs were to be put first when coming up with a design:

“We’re going through the process now of defining what the building will be for. First and foremost, there will be plenty of spectator accomodation that looks after the needs of the Kent member.” said Clifford.

“It’s a big space that we can fill and if we can have a secondary use that takes it beyond just a spectator stand and that’s the reason why we brought Paul in.”

“He’s just going through the process of scoping out some things at the moment, one of which is a sporting hub for Kent, which is something I think the county is lacking, but that is one of a range of options we might consider and we will see where Paul takes it.”

The county club have also recently announced their membership prices for the 2013 season with a slight increase across the board, but crucially there are now more packages available to supporters to try and cater for fans needs.

With that in mind, Jamie Clifford remains positive Kent are doing all they can to give supporters the best offers they possibly can:

“We had a big price increase in 2009, but we haven’t really done anything since then and a 5% increase in those three years was something we felt we had to do.”

“We had to keep prices up with inflation and we weren’t doing that. It’s always disappointing when you have to do that, but that is the reality of running a business.”

“We’ve tried to minimise the impact of that as we have the concession for over 65’s and for that particular age group we have kept prices in line with previous years.”

“We’ve also added other things to add value and for £20 extra you can create a membership that is transferable. We do a lot of research and try not to pluck numbers out of the air. We recognise not everyone can come to every day of the season and if they can get value by giving it to their neighbour then we are happy for that to happen.”

“We hope a lot of people take advantage of that and get better value for their membership. At the end of the day we have to be sensible about our pricing and I think we give tremendous value, particularly for those that use it.”

With finances around the club said to lead to Kent announcing poor finanical figures for the year, Clifford told KSN how the club were having to explore the option of some redundancies to help balance the books, but is hoping that doesn’t have to happen:

“The reality was that once we’d had the wettest summer on record, we were always going to be playing catch up.”

“We have got a very robust financial plan, but we have been knocked off course. We thought 2012 could be a challenging year with the Olympics and football and so on, but the reality was they didn’t have much impact and the weather did.”

“Once we’d suffered at Tunbridge Wells we were always playing catch up and the problem with that is that it has to be resolved somewhere. You can’t create extra days of cricket, so we are going through a process of making sure the budgets and plans for 2013 and beyond are right for where the club is at.”

“It could be a process that leads to redundancies, but I am very hopeful that isn’t the case, but there is a danger when you go through that consultation process, that the risk exists.”

“We’ve told staff that, we’ve been very up front with them and now we go through the process to try and make sure we avoid that if we possibly can.”

“Staff costs are a significant cost within our cost base, so it’s only right that we make sure we have got the right people in the right roles and doing the right jobs.”

“That process will go on over the next month or so.”

Finally, the club remain in the market of exploring all options for new signings for the 2013 season and last week India batsman was a name linked with a move to Canterbury.

Albeit hugely unrealistic that the supremely gifted batsman would be gracing the St Lawrence Ground, Clifford joked that Chairman George Kennedy may well have been holding talks whilst watching England:

“The Chairman has been in India, so maybe he knows something I don’t! There’s always speculation, but that’s one name I haven’t heard of yet. It would certainly be an interesting one!”