The deputy leader of Hull City Council has labelled the removal of signage bearing its name from the city’s KCOM Stadium as “wholly unacceptable”.
The signage was yesterday (Thursday) removed from the main entrance to the venue, which serves as the home of Championship football club Hull City and rugby league team Hull FC.
It is believed that venue operator the Superstadium Management Company (SMC) – whose director, Ehab Allam, is the vice-chairman of Hull City – was responsible for the removal of the signage.
In a statement published on the council’s Twitter account, deputy leader Daren Hale said: “It is wholly unacceptable that the phosphor bronze crest bearing the city’s three crowns and the Hull City Council sign have been removed.
“This stadium was built by Hull City Council for the people of Hull. We are taking this very seriously and urgently communicating our concerns to the SMC with the expectation that they will remedy the situation immediately.”
The council leases the stadium, which opened in 2002, to the SMC and the two parties have had a fractious relationship for some time. The SMC recently fitted a set of security gates at a regularly-used footbridge that connects the stadium to a street that leads to the city centre, a move the council said was carried out without planning permission.
The security gates – which the SMC said were fitted to combat the threat of terrorism – are only opened on match days.
When asked by the Hull Daily Mail newspaper for a reason why the signage was taken down, Allam yesterday said: “The pirates must have taken it down.”
The Mail noted that the remark was a reference to alleged comments made by ex-council leader Colin Inglis that suggested the SMC was “run by pirates”. The newspaper’s report added that it has no record of Inglis having labelled any SMC member as a pirate.
Image: Yorkshire Forward
