Director Gary Harwood has reported on a meeting held last night to discuss the allotment land required for the Abbey Stadium redevelopment. He commented:

"Representatives of the Club, the Council's officers, the Council's members (all three political parties) and the allotment societies met at the Abbey Stadium last night with an objective of reaching agreement on the 'land take' required for the redevelopment before the planning application is heard by the planning committee on 8th March.

"It is regretable that the objective was not met but I believe that all present found the meeting to be worthwhile and generally positive. CUFC had submitted a revised planning application on 2nd February that resulted in less allotment plots being required to achieve the redevelopment. The revised application involved the acquisition of 11.75 plots instead of the 18/19 in the original application of June last year.

"Whilst the Club felt this was a significant compromise, Directors, and specifically Colin Davies (our General Manager), had been actively working with City Councillors, City Planners and representatives of the allotment society to reduce the impact on the overall Whitehill Road allotment site further. This additional work resulted in a proposal that some of the funds CUFC would be investing in compensation for the loss of 11.75 allotment plots should be used to bring back alternative land into allotment use.

"The alternative land in question is a large piece to the West of the current allotment land (currently water logged) and a smaller piece to the East which is currently 'contaminated'. City Council experts had inspected these two pieces of land and were confident that they could be 're-claimed' for allotment use. Doing so would result in the equivalent of 11 new allotment plots being created and 3 existing unusable plots being brought back to 'good use'. Effectively the allotment society would have a net gain of 2.25 usable allotment plots as a direct result of the Club's redevelopment.

"The members of the allotment society present at last night's meeting were unable to agree to this proposal by the Club/Council without investigating the land condition further (however some of their committee/members had been working with the Club/Council to come up with the proposal). The allotment society members agreed to do this by mid next week and then formally respond to these latest proposals.

"The Club and the Council have worked extremely hard to come up with a solution that involves no loss of acreage overall for the allotment society although it of course does require a few plot holders to be relocated on the site. We feel that this compromise is one that should be acceptable to the allotment society although, as members emphasised at last night's meeting, their agreement to inspect this additional land should not be taken as any indication that they will accept the Club's/Council's compromise offer. I for one sincerely hope they do."

General Manager Colin Davies was interviewed by Will Jones for U's Net this afternoon and the transcript will appear in U's News tomorrow afternoon.