In meetings with Millers Trust, Tony Stewart has consistently said that he wants to sit down with fans and discuss their ideas on the new stadium. Millers Trust felt that an all party approach would be the best way of gauging opinion and getting fans ideas to take to Tony Stewart. The Working Party held its first meeting on Monday 29 March 2010 when the following members of the group were present :
A Working Party has therefore been formed by bringing together fans from various groups and individual fans who expressed an interest when the idea was first announced at the Fans Forum last December. The various groups represented include the MillersMad website, Disabled Supporters, Millers Trust and Rotherham United Supporters Club.
Tony Styles
Joanne Archer
Bob Tyas
Dean Hall (Deano) : MillersMad
Mark Thomas : Millers Trust
Bob Booth : Supporters Club
Lee Rowbotham : Millers Trust
Richard Gaynor (bigrich) and Steve Dickinson (Redduke) of MillersMad, Jonathan Wood, Neil Uttley, Moira Mcgrother, Michael Frost, Jeff Bristow and John Harrison will also be on the Working Party as will other fans who were not available on 29 March.
The purposes of the Working Party are :
To identify, with the help of fans, those issues / facilities upon which fans want to put forward opinions or ideas.
To canvass fans'opinions and to provide opportunities for fans to express their opinion / ideas.
To try and identify any consensus amongst fans on particular issues - on some things a clear consensus might emerge and become obvious, on others it may not be possible to identify a majority view.
To meet Tony Stewart at various stages and report fans' opinions to him.
To obtain as much information on the new stadium as possible and communicate it to fans.
The Working Party has been formed on the basis that each member of the group will put a shift in and take an active part in reading, seeking and listening to fans' opinions and each member will be expected to take an active part in at least one issue of importance to fans. Although some of the things which matter most will be obvious to us all ( such as decent seating, decent legroom, no restricted view seats ) we will rely very much on fans to point out any issue which they feel to be of importance.
At our first meeting we identified a few issues / categories which we would want to look at. These included seating, disabled viewing areas, typical obstructions to sight lines for the disabled and how they might be avoided, designated areas such as the Kop End and Children's/ Family Area, the naming of Stadium and individual stands, pre-match facilities and entertainment for fans including access to bars & Sky Sports, Food and Drinks, layout and width of concourses to enable easy pre-match and half time access, match day atmosphere, Acoustics and sound Systems, WC Facilities, use of the pitch, facilities for fans' meetings, Parking, Buy a Brick Message Wall for previous contributors and new ones or Honours Board, Health & Safety, Safe Exits and Emergency Access and Exit.
This is not an exhaustive list and as we have said above we want fans to identify and bring to our attention any issues they consider important.
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