Fulham Football Club wants to build a pier that will extend c. 85 metres into the middle of river. It will create a significant navigational obstruction at a location that is already a natural bottleneck especially at low tide.

This is one of the busiest stretches of water for boating activities in the UK given the rowing, sailing and sea cadets/scouts clubs nearby. It is an important sporting and recreational venue for schools, youngsters and adults who wish to learn something new, and for local, national and international racing.

The pier will pose a dangerous hazard as boats converge to avoid it in constricted, tidal waters. Risks of collision, serious injury and death will escalate.

In addition, the pier will service passenger ferries whose regular schedules will extend up river from their present limit at Putney Bridge, thereby encroaching into this busy boating area.

Their bulk and limited manoeuvrability increase the navigational hazards. On match days, these ferries will be backed up along the river awaiting a berth to offload their passengers. Each ferry will need to turn around to go back down river; they will block most of the river on every occasion compounding the navigational dangers.

Today’s sporting and recreational use of the river will be destroyed.

All the local clubs are unanimous, please help us to save our unique water-borne complex, something that has helped to define our community in south west London for over 100 years.

Click here to sign the Change.org petition.

Below are graphic illustrations from FFC website (now removed) of how the pier might look together with an overlay of the likely tracks of the UBER ferries and how they conflict with the rowing lanes and navigating the Thames and a video of a trail that UBER ferries undertook a few months off the stadium.

There is also an FFC You Tube video from April 2021 which depicts a very different but equally substantial proposition – click here to view.