Rhyl FC

Former Welsh champions Rhyl FC were the first football club to close down due to the Coronavirus after 141 years of existence. The North Wales side confirmed they had began a winding-up process, with directors citing the financial impact of the Coronavirus crisis. The four-time Welsh Cup winners played in the second-tier Cymru North. Rhyl had warned recently they could not meet financial obligations and required significant external investment to continue. Rhyl said they were offered support from the Football Association of Wales, but it would not be enough to save the club, who recently said they would need £175,000 of investment to offer long-term security.

There is now more devastating news for not only the football club but the whole town of Rhyl. The land that Rhyl FC’s stadium ‘Belle Vue’ sits on has been sold off and the stadium is set to be demolished.

The private company that own the land that Belle Vue sits on, were only receiving £24,000 per annum in rent from the football club but now the football club has entered administration they are no longer receiving any income and have taken the drastic action to sell the plot of land as quickly as possible before a deep recession hits the UK because of the impact from Covid-19.

Elitenews247 can confirm that a £1.5m sale has been agreed on the land and demolition of the stadium and plans for the new development are set to begin within weeks.

The devastating news for the town is that the land is set to become a new affordable housing development, to re home and rehabilitate ex convicts on their release from prison. The planning permission for a high rise 200 apartment block is currently being drawn up and the new owners are 99% sure it will get granted. Prisons are currently overcrowded and convicts who are in jail for lesser sentences are set to be eased back into the community, once they have completed their rehabilitation.

Across England and Wales, it cost an average of £37,543 a year to keep a prisoner in jail last year. That was up 6.1 percent from £35,271 in 2018/19. The average cost per prisoner was similar for all public sector prisons. The estimated cost of housing an ex con and rehabilitating them on the Rhyl site would be much more cost effective at £500 per week (£26,000 per year) a saving of almost £11,500 per year per prisoner.

UK jails have become so overcrowded that the prison population in England and Wales has almost doubled over the last 20 years from about 45,000 to over 85,000. This rapid increase in prison numbers over the last six months is putting additional pressure on a prison system that has been overcrowded for decades.