I certainly wasn’t including all builders and certainly not genuine honest tradesmen!
I should have put ‘some builders’

Do you think it would be as high as 800k. I would have thought with his buying power and available trades people he would be able to do a lot of work for considerably reduced prices, which I’ve guessed is why so much is getting planned

If Morgan Swindles are the contractors then it will be nearer 8 million and the standard of work will be dire.

I guess we'll have to wait and see who Matt Ellis decides to use in order to see his take on MS.

That's not really accurate imho. It's not been a total success I agree, but "dire", come on.

Most post Brexit/Covid construction projects have struggled, and MS are no different to the rest. Please don't read anything political into my Brexit statement, but it has starved the construction industry of some of it's best and most willing workers. Whist post Covid a huge number of people seem reluctant to re-join the work force, especially in jobs like these, ones that offer no work from home options. Hence the massive rise in long term sickness due to alleged mental heath issues. The industry has lost a lot of it's skill base in the last five years and it's yet to be rectified.

Then there are the issues in the supply chain caused by the various conflicts around the globe. I know for a fact that MS struggled with the supply chain, despite them being a relatively large outfit. Items constantly failed to arrive on time, or worse, had to be substituted with inferior items or fitted at the wrong time in the process, to allow the build to remain even slightly on schedule.

You must know this to be the case, as you are primarily a businessman.

The 8 million was originally intended to do the full North Stand as well, and that's where I do think JM and MC fell down. I definitely believe that Ellis would have driven a harder bargain, and found a way to force MS into doing it all in budget. I may be wrong, but I suspect I'm not. MC and JM are accountants, Ellis is a businessman, and as you know there is a big difference.

So to answer your question, I think that whoever does it will have to do it within budget, and to the standard agreed, or they won't get paid.

That was a ballpark figure and I agree he could probably get it done for far less. Unfortunately it's easy to give cost for new builds, but not so much with existing ones, who knows what horrors they may find. Though tbf this is more of a cosmetic upgrades than structural. So I reckon you're right.