Huish Park: the questions supporters should be asking now
The more you look at Yeovil Town’s board changes and the ongoing attempts to reunite the club with Huish Park, the clearer one thing becomes; the identity of whoever eventually owns the stadium matters just as much as whether it is bought back at all.
That may sound like a technical distinction. It isn’t.
For supporters, “the club has bought Huish Park back” naturally suggests that Yeovil Town Football Club once again owns its own ground.
Legally, however, several very different things could sit behind that sentence.
The freehold could be acquired by Yeovil Football & Athletic Club Limited, the company which actually operates the football club.
It could instead be acquired by Yeovil Town Holdings Limited, the parent company.
Or it could potentially sit in another property or development company connected to the ownership.
Those arrangements might have the same ultimate owner today.
They are not the same protection for Yeovil Town tomorrow.
Why does this matter?
Football supporters have learned repeatedly that separating clubs from their grounds creates risk.
An owner can control both companies and everything can appear perfectly secure. But ownership changes. Businesses fail. Borrowing takes place. Relationships deteriorate.
Once the stadium sits outside the football club itself, the two assets can potentially follow different paths.
That is why simply hearing that the ownership wants to “reunite the club and stadium” should not be the end of the conversation.
We need to know exactly what reunite means.
The new regulator does not make the question disappear
The arrival of the Independent Football Regulator is hugely important, but supporters should be wary of assuming that it makes the future of Huish Park automatically secure.
The new regulatory regime places important controls around football clubs disposing of interests they themselves hold in their home grounds.
But Huish Park currently has an unusual structure.
Somerset Council owns the freehold.
Yeovil Town Football & Athletic Club and Yeovil Town Holdings are separate legal entities.
That raises an obvious question if the buy-back happens; which company becomes the registered owner?
If the freehold is returned directly to the football club, that is one thing.
If it is held by a separate parent or property company, supporters need to understand what permanent safeguards prevent the football club and stadium being separated again in future.
Ian Scobbie makes those questions more interesting
The appointment of Ian Scobbie to the board has understandably attracted attention.
He is not a newcomer to the current ownership project.
Scobbie was specifically named when Prabhu Srinivasan completed the takeover in May 2025 as one of those who had assisted with the transaction.
He has remained around the club since.
His professional background is in insolvency, restructuring and corporate recovery, while his football experience includes involvement with clubs navigating serious financial and property problems.
That expertise could be enormously valuable to Yeovil Town.
Indeed, if the objective is to restructure the Huish Park arrangements, develop appropriate parts of the wider site, remove a rent bill of more than £200,000 a year and place the club on a stronger long-term footing, appointing someone with that experience makes considerable sense.
But it also makes several perfectly reasonable questions worth asking.
Who did Scobbie represent during the 2025 takeover?
Was he advising Prabhu Srinivasan and the incoming ownership, Martin Hellier’s side of the transaction, Yeovil Town itself or Yeovil Town Holdings? The evidence clearly points to Prabhu.
Has he continued to provide professional advice since?
Does he have any financial interest in either company beyond his role as a director?
Those are not accusations.
They are ordinary governance questions when someone who helped facilitate an ownership transaction subsequently joins the board.
Then there is the timing
Stuart Robins has moved from Executive Chairman to Non-Executive Director, officially linked to his election to the National League board.
At the same time Scobbie has formally entered the Yeovil boardroom and Sahil Prabhu, who has apparently already been working closely on football operations, has also become a director.
Taken together, this looks less like routine housekeeping and more like the ownership establishing a new structure for the next stage of its plans.
And one of the biggest tasks facing that structure is undoubtedly Huish Park.
The club has already said it wants to reunite the stadium with Yeovil Town.
The buy-back option runs until 2028.
Work has been undertaken looking at the wider commercial possibilities of the site.
The original council transaction itself was structured to allow value from “non-core” land potentially to assist with the stadium’s financial position.
None of that is inherently worrying.
Quite the opposite.
A sensible redevelopment strategy which removes Yeovil Town’s enormous annual rent burden, generates new non-matchday income and restores control of Huish Park could be one of the best things to happen to the club in years.
But the structure matters.
What protection should supporters want?
The ideal outcome surely isn’t simply; the current owner controls the football club and the stadium.
It is:
Huish Park is legally protected as the permanent home of Yeovil Town Football Club regardless of who the owner happens to be.
Those are very different things.
Supporters therefore deserve clarity on several straightforward points:
Which legal entity would purchase Huish Park from Somerset Council?
Would the freehold sit within Yeovil Football & Athletic Club Limited itself?
If not, what binding protection would prevent the stadium subsequently being sold, mortgaged or separated from the football club?
If development of surrounding land creates a substantial uplift in value, where does that value go?
Would it permanently strengthen Yeovil Town Football Club, or sit elsewhere within the ownership structure?
Would the owners support renewed Asset of Community Value protection for Huish Park?
And perhaps most importantly; would they be prepared to give supporters some permanent legal protection over any future disposal of the stadium — through a golden share or comparable mechanism?
That last question should not be viewed as an expression of distrust towards the current owners.
Good governance is not designed solely for the owner you have today.
It is designed for the owner you might have in fifteen years.
Prabhu Srinivasan could successfully buy Huish Park back, invest heavily in the club and leave Yeovil Town in substantially better condition than he found it.
Supporters should hope he does.
But if we have learned anything from the last decade at Yeovil Town, it is that the long-term security of Huish Park should never again depend entirely upon the goodwill of whoever happens to own the football club.
So there is one question above all others that deserves an answer as negotiations progress:
If Huish Park is bought back from Somerset Council, whose name will actually be on the Land Registry title the following morning?
That may prove to be every bit as important as the price paid for it.