The Southend United stadium plans at the Fossetts Farm development were scrapped in 2024 as part of a plan to save the club.
National League Southend is now set to stay at its crumbling Roots Hall Ground after abandoning ambitious long-term plans to build a new ground.
Why have Southend scrapped their new stadium plans?
The saga has been ongoing since 2017 when the club agreed with Southend-on-Sea Borough Council to build 500 residential homes on Roots Hall and extra housing on the site of the proposed new stadium. The income from these developments was planned to provide the necessary finance to build the new stadium, which was initially planned to hold 21,000 fans.
2025 updates
The club's takeover by the COSU consortium was completed in July 2024. Sadly, while this is good news for Southend United as a club, plans to continue the Fossetts Farm development will not be continued as a stadium project. The plans for the project will continue, though it will be a purely residential project. However, the original plans for the homes have been cut down to around 800 to 850. The project won't start till 2026, despite plans being approved in late 2024.
How the new stadium may have looked
The artist's impression above is courtesy of the Southend United website dating from 2020.
Southend United's financial problems linked with stadium U-turn
Those ambitious ideas were then downgraded to a 16,226-seater stadium, with plans for a hotel also dropped, but the new report recently approved by the Council will see 1,300 homes built on the Fossetts Farm site instead.
This emergency ruling is thought to have saved the club from financial ruin, as Southend United's new stadium plans were blocking Australian IT millionaire Justin Rees's proposed takeover of the club.
While full details have not yet been agreed upon, the Council decision may allow room for Roots Hall to be redeveloped instead.
“I think we were all in danger of not just seeing the demise of the club, but also much-needed housing that had been promised over a period of time as well,” Southend-On-Sea Council Leader Tony Cox told the BBC.
“I am hopeful the next phase of this will go well, and we will come back with something we can all agree on, move forward, and allow the club to have a successful and sustainable future.”
Southend United have already faced sanctions
Southend United has been facing extreme financial pressure in recent months. In August 2023, the National League docked the Club 10 points after it failed to clear an HMRC debt. The club was then issued a winding-up order in October, with current owner Ron Martin pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for its financial struggles.
Existing owner is highly unpopular with Southend fans
Southend supporters were enraged to see Mr. Martin attend his first game in over a year on Boxing Day in 2023, with one fans group asking for the owner to be issued with a ban from attending further matches.
“A football club that has been run as a failed vehicle to a residential property fortune, can hopefully once again be run as just that, a football club, read a statement issued by the Southend Fan Protest Group. It is now time the consortium and CEO put in place plans to serve Ron Martin with a banning order from Roots Hall on match days.”
What will happen to Roots Hall now?
The takeover still has not been rubber-stamped. Southend United fans are left with their existing ground at Roots Hall in desperate need of renovation, with reports of crumbling concrete, closed toilets and other structural issues.
The 12,392-seater stadium has been home to Southend United since it opened in 1955.
The new Stadium plans at Fossetts Farm before they were scrapped