Operators London Stadium 185 say they know of no plans to replace the retractable seating at the London Stadium.
Some reports today suggest that the stadium owners are planning to replace the retractable seating from 2018 and claim capacity could be reduced while further construction work is carried out one stand at a time.
However a spokesman for London Stadium 185 says it is news to them and they have no knowledge of replacing the lower bowl seating.
He told ClaretandHugh: “This would be a matter for the Stadium owners E20 Stadium LLP but to our knowledge there are no plans to replace the current lower tier seating”
The retractable seating has suffered problems since the original company who designed it went into administration and has never really lived up to the promise of an automated system.
Over the summer the stadium owners brought in air skates to help move the lower stands and employed the services of experts from around the world to advise how the moving system could be improved.
At the moment the movement and reconstruction takes up to 15 days but they hope to bring this down to around 10 days with practice and further refining of the process.
Freedom of information documents recently seen by ClaretandHugh show there are no plans to convert to athletics mode and back again outside the current July window and it appears any hirers like the recently announced concerts of Depeche Mode and Robbie Williams will be hosted in football mode.
I am wondering how many athletics meeings are held in the stadium every year,because it seems to me that WHU should make the owners an offer to do away with the athletics track and bring the seating forward permanently,increase capacity and pay more in rent to cover the loss of athletics income.Surely it would sort out a lot of problems and you can still hold concerts there.