At the time the idea was to encourage donations at £50 each to pay for one of the many fence panels needed to enclose the ground so that we could get the pitch laid and the ground up and running for our reserve and youth teams to use and then to build on up from there to take it up to the appropriate standard for our first team to use as well .

Subsequently we discovered that it was all or nothing as far as the London Borough of Havering were concerned. Namely that we had to build the ground all in one go to the approved design standard.

Just to remind you that the way Boro Bonanza worked was that donations could be made either by cheque, cash or by a Paypal link on the website. Whatever the method chosen all payments ended up in an Abbey National Bank (now Santander) account set up by Mike Woods and me specifically for this purpose.

At the time of the Westlands planning approval we received many donations some of which were generously more than the £50 suggested amount and from the total collected to date the fund has been used for paying fees connected with the Westlands project amongst which were professional design services, the original LBH planning permission application fee and more recently to pay for our planning application renewal which, of course, has been granted.

As matters progress with Westlands we have moved on from the recent consultation stage (see https://www.havering.gov.uk/Pages/ServiceChild/Westlands-playing-fields-consultation.aspx) to the LBH application to the Secretary of State for Education for us to be granted the necessary long team lease for us at Westlands which has to be done because the LBH only manage the playing fields as a schools facility on behalf of national government.

Steve Gardener has more fully explained all the reasons for these procedures to you in his recent message and has told you that the next highly important decision regarding the future of Romford FC playing at Westlands is expected around this coming Christmas time.

During the period between now and then we need to build up the Westland fighting fund again to as large a total as possible which is the reason for this important message to you.

Sadly we will not still be able to use the actual Boro Bonanza website on www.borobonanza.com because it has been very severely hacked and is due to be closed. To those original generous supporters - and you know who you are - whose donations were listed on the site your club wishes to offer you our everlasting thanks.

To replace Boro Bonanza we have set up a new ground fund donation email service at romfordfc.fund@gmail.com which has a link to the original BB Paypal service which feeds into our Santander bank account. If you wish to donate but don't use Paypal then a cheque made out to R. Morgan & M.R.Woods is an alternative method as is cash for which receipts will be issued if requested.

So Romford FC asks you once again to be generous. We know that times are still difficult but any amount you can spare will be most gratefully appreciated to help towards bringing us our own home ground in Romford to fruition.

Many thanks.

'Up the Boro'!

Barry Morgan