kirkstall Forge site anybody?. Could open a rail station there too, and still in North Leeds. The whole saga with the local residents and the Southstand, and the huge cost of replacing the North stand means it maybe cheaper to up sticks and move.

I'd love to be Prime Minister, there would be new stadiums literally everywhere.

In case some of the previous responses haven't helped, the reference is to Wakefield City Council applying to build the new Wakefield stadium on (partially) green belt land adjacent to the Wakefield/Leeds boundary on the old Newmarket Colliery site at Stanley next to the M62.
Leeds CC objected & the application has been called in by the secretary of state (a certain Mr Eric Pickles I believe, former Tory leader of Bradford CC) thereby delatying the start of the project.
This all jeopardised the Wildcats superleague licence application that was only saved by the demise of the Crusaders.
HTH
IA will no doubt point out all my mistakes in the above summary but I think I've got the gist of the matter correct.

It is a reasonable summary!

However, the issue now is that the ONLY statutory objector left to the Newmarket scheme is Leeds City Council. Their objection to the scheme was based on two factors, the possible commercial impact on the proposals at the Aire Valley and what they called erosion of the Green-belt along the border between Leeds & Wakefield. Both these arguments were quite weak and were mostly an attempt to 'legitimatise' the objection of a vocal minority of voters in nearby Methley, which also happens to be the ward of the leader of Leeds City Council... surprise, surprise!

So, when the Aire Valley was given Employment Zone status by the current Government and the Ecological issues were sorted with Natural England and highways issues sorted with the Highways Agency, it was hoped that Leeds City Council would drop it's formal objection and not appear at the public inquiry (although, we expected that maybe him and some other individual councillors would speak to continue to represent some of their ward members) ! However, said leader of Leeds City Council seems to have made some rather rash promises to his ward members about LCC continuing to formally object to the scheme on their behalf, despite the fact they now appear to be a bunch of hypocritical bully's who are only continuing to object because said leaders has backed himself in to a corner.

It all worth mentioning that Wakefield City Council have a legal requirement to find 95 hectares of additional B8 development land on the M62 corridor, so no matter if it is this site, or another, it will both be currently listed as Green-belt and also close to the border between the two cities.

So, the leader of LCC is going to spend a nice sum of LCC's council tax payers cash on continuing to object to something, as the only statutory objector remaining, to save face and votes in his ward, despite that fact it will create around 2500 permanent jobs and 500 temporary construction jobs within a region that has seen the largest fall in employment in the whole of the UK!

Go figure!

Imagine a councillor representing the interests of the most vocal of his constituents.

Doesn't he understand that's not how local politics works?

Andy, I don't have a problem with that... but that is not what 'he' is doing I am afraid! There is a big difference between him, and any of his fellow LCC councillors asking to be heard by and standing up at the PI themselves and representing their own ward members views as their democratically elected representatives, and spending what I estimate could be as much as £100k, to hire lawyers and advocates to maintain a formal LCC statutory objection to a development outside of their area of governance. Even more so when the democratically elected members of the council in which the area of governance of the site does reside in, voted unanimously to approve it.

Just like Sheffield trying to stick their nose into LCC business, then LCC are without any real foundation (given that no other statutory objectors now exist) are sticking their nose into Wakefield's business.

When the Aire Valley obtained it's Employment Zone status then LCC should have reconsidered and withdrawn it's formal objection... instead it is spending council tax payers money on fighting a scheme outside of it's own boundary's... for what exactly?