Council threatened with legal action over disposal of sports stadium

Campaign group ‘Friends of the Shay’ contends that the council’s consultation did not provide residents with the option of opposing the sale, and that there was a failure to provide “sufficient information”, including important financial insights.

The Shay is home to Halifax’s professional sports teams - football’s FC Halifax Town and rugby league’s Halifax Panthers – but is council-owned.

In February 2024, the council agreed to stop running the stadium by April 2025 “to save £161,000 per year, and to remove the additional annual cost of up to £500,000 to meet the stadium’s running costs and health and safety needs”.

Two proposals for the Shay were then presented to the council’s Cabinet.

Campaigners said they approached Calderdale on “several occasions” to raise concerns about the way that statutory procedures had been applied by the council in their proposed disposal of the stadium.

Friends of the Shay said: “In January 2026 the Council’s Monitoring Officer responded to say he was 'satisfied' with the process, without providing any reasons or direct responses to the individual points we had raised.

“Following this response, this group is taking action to escalate this issue further by issuing to the council a formal pre action protocol letter prior to making a claim for a judicial review.”

The letter, published by the campaign group, sets out nine proposed grounds for the challenge, including over consultation and “breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED)”.

The campaign group set out the “broad topics” covered by the grounds as follows:

• “The way that residents were consulted on proposals, they weren’t given the option of opposing the sale of the Shay. There was one single question, based on the method of disposal rather than whether the stadium should be disposed of or not.
• A failure to provide people with sufficient information, including important financial insights.
• Evidence suggesting bias towards a preferred bidder, highlighted by works being undertaken at the Shay with that bidder’s involvement before any formal agreement to dispose of the stadium had been made.
• The absence of key assessments, including the crucial Value for Money appraisal that would help to make financial sense of proposals.
• Procedural failings heightened by a failure to intervene where serious and credible concerns were formally raised.
• No evidence that the chosen option makes best financial sense for residents, including a lack of true clarity in relation to running costs and the absence of a formal financial valuation of the stadium.”

Friends of the Shay said: “In isolation, each of these issues are a cause for concern when a council is disposing of a valuable and historic community asset. Several of them could be considered to be serious breaches of the Gunning Principles, which are designed to ensure councils operate in a fair and transparent way in the consultation processes. Collectively the issues raised represent a cumulative unfairness that cannot be reasonably ignored.

“[…] Because of these issues we are asking the council to immediately suspend disposal activity.”

A Calderdale Council spokesperson said: "We will, as required, consider the matters raised in the pre-action letter and respond."

Lottie Winson