SOUTHEND United chairman confirms they will change the name of their stand after a deal meant their stand now has a “Gilbert & Rose West Stand”.

This week the National League club announced the West Stand at Roots Hall has been sponsored by local estate agent Gilbert & Rose, but an unfortunate juxtaposition means its name now unwittingly includes the name of serial killer Rose West.

The matter sparked a flurry of activity on social media and, having been alerted to the unintentional reference to West.

READ MORE >> Southend United accidentally creates 'Rose West' stand in renaming blunder

Talking on TalkSport, Ron Martin, Southend chairman, confirm they were “definitely going to change it”.

He said: “It is unfortunate and really disappointing, but these things happen.

“My apologies go to everybody and we will get it changed.

“I suspect that the Gilbert And Rose are delighted with the press that they’re getting but it’s not good for the club.

“I suspect that the people in our commercial department were not born at the time of that tragedy and so I guess that’s why that’s happened.

“To be fair, it should have been picked up by the senior management, it wasn’t, and it came to my attention the night before last and we’re changing the name of the stand to ‘The West Stand sponsored by Gilbert And Rose’.

“I spoke to Tom Lawrence, the CEO, about it and we’re definitely going to change it.

“We’ll certainly change the name of the stand it won’t be as is being construed at the moment.”

Rose West was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1995 for the murders of 10 young women and girls.

Mr Martin also admitted he was “embarrassed” by the mistake but admitted season ticket cards probably won’t be changed.

He added: “We’re probably not going to change the season cards as that’s probably an unnecessary expense unless people really want us to revisit that.

"They have been issued so we don’t really want to reissue 3000 season cards again."