Rovers Senior Training Centre at Brockhall has been sold to a new company set up by owners Venky’s London Limited.

Documents listed at the Land Registry outline that the Senior Training Centre, which had been earmarked for development earlier this year, was sold for £16.6m, with a lease-back agreement in place.

Venkateshwara London Limited are now the registered owners of Blackburn Rovers Senior Training Centre & Lodge at Brockhall Village with the transfer from Blackburn Rovers Football and Athletic Club made on June 24.

Venkateshwara London Limited is separate to Venky’s London Limited which was set up in October 2010 ahead of their purchase of the club, and owns 99.99 per cent of Rovers, but both come under the VH Group.

The incorporation of the new company is listed on Companies House as having taken place on June 11 2021, two weeks before the sale of Brockhall took place.

Club owners Anuradha Desai, Venkatesh Rao and Balaji Rao are all listed as people of significant control in the new company, however, Prashant Laxman Gomashe, Ketan Shrikant Renade and Rohan Ajay Bhagwat, are listed as the directors in documents registered at Companies House.

The correspondence addresses of the two companies are the same.

The Land Registry documents state that all covenants previously in place remain, and must be adhered to.

The club confirmed Ewood Park and the Academy Training Centre, situated inside Brockhall Village, are unaffected and remain owned by the football club.

In a statement issued to the Lancashire Telegraph, a club spokesman said: “Responding to the unexpected and exceptional circumstances of the Covid pandemic, and taking into account the imminent change in FFP rules precluding the inclusion of profit on sale of assets with effect from July 1 2021 onwards, in June 2021 the club implemented a restructure of certain club properties, whilst ensuring all affected assets remain under the ownership and held within the Venky’s group.

“The properties included in this restructure were the Senior Training Centre (‘STC’) and the Hillside and Ribble View properties.

“In particular, the Ewood Park and Academy sites were not included in this restructure and remain within the ownership of the club.

“Through the sale and leaseback agreements that were put in place as part of the restructure, the club will continue to carry out its operations at all the properties in exactly the same way that it always has done.”

The sale will be listed in the next set of club accounts which will be released in March 2022 and cover the 12 months to June 30 2021.

Rovers announced their intention in February to demolish the club’s STC and use the land to build 170 homes. That would have seen Rovers integrate their two Brockhall Village-based training centres into a single ‘state-of-the-art’ facility.

However, those plans were shelved in April due to opposition from residents and Ribble Valley Borough Council.

Chief executive Steve Waggott said the previous plans had been subject to ‘immense opposition’ and last month revealed the club were looking at the possibility of identifying a suitable site in the Blackburn with Darwen area.

Freehold land and buildings owned by Blackburn Rovers Football and Athletic Limited were valued, in the accounts to June 30 2020, at £28.4m, although that valuation isn’t broken down, but would include Ewood Park and the training facility.

Accounts for the two years ended June 30 1995 showed a combined spend of more than £25m on developing the Brockhall training centre and significant re-development at Ewood Park.