Attendances 2011

Quote: Theboyem "Not quite I believe. A decision should hopefully be be reached April/May 2012. It then has to go back to the council to be rubber stamped. Any conditons placed on it (and there will be some, there always is) then need to be worked on before full planning permission can be put in. Then its the wait for that to get passed which can be up to 12 weeks. Once passed then we need to unlock the funding and spend a year building it after adding on a few weeks to the planned schedule due to adverse weather etc. So if everything goes smoothly it will be the start of the 2014 season before we see a game played there.'"

Just to clarify a couple of things.

The LDF first - The final site specific report report on this will be going to the inspector for the SoS very soon (it might have already gone!). The public hearings for this will happen in September and the planning inspector is expected to issue his recommendation report by the end of the year or maybe early 2012. The report will then have to be amended to include his recommendations (a curious term, given that they are legally binding recommendations... so instructions would be a better term!). The council are targeting approving the final document at their March meeting. So the LDF will be approved and in force by March/April 2012. They expectation will be that planning inspector will recommend the re designation of Newmarket as employment land to meet his previous legal requirement of additional employment land on the M62 corridor. The only way we feel he can really knock Newmarket back is to find another site(s) of 51ha on the M62 corridor that he thinks is better... the good news is that no one seems to have an answer to that important question and the objectors are ignoring it, hoping it magically goes away!!! The only answer that Leeds City council can come up with to recommend site in errr, Leeds... not the point of the Wakefield LDF really is it and does not fit the legally binding requirement of the core strategy.

The PI on the planning application will have it's public hearings now in December. This means that the 'recommendation's from the planning inspector report on the LDF will be published around the same time, or just after. So that means the planning inspector dealing with the PI will know the outcome of the LDF as he starts to write his report and as such it will have a legally binding impact on the actual outcome if not the detail of his report to the SoS. What I mean by that is that if the LDF recommends the re designation of Newmarket then he will HAVE to approve (tell the SoS to approve) the development of the employment part of the land. However, the associated development (stadium, hotel, fast food, starter units) and also the detail of the employment development is still within his remit. The expectation is that the planning inspector will recommend approval of the scheme with changes and conditions. If Yorkcourt and the only two statutory objectors (the Highways Agency and English Nature) resolve their issues and/or reach a suitable compromise later this year, as excepted, then the majority of these changes will already be known or expected by Yorkcourt... unless someone comes up with a bombshell during the public hearings... which is very doubtful.

(This e-mail is longer than anticipated)

So, the PI report is indeed expected by April/May and in actual fact if the LDF report goes back to April or further, then expect the PI report to be delayed by the same amount.

Finally, when the SoS issues his recommendation on the PI then that is that, planning is approved as of that moment, it does not have to go back to the planning committee as they have already approved it. Yorkcourt will be allowed to start on site immediately, at risk though because reserved matters will still be required for the stadium but that should be a formality as Cas's was.

Still I think you are right, the best you can do is to get the stadium ready for mid-season 2013, so in fact it will be open for start of 2014 season, which means that even if this whole process slips by 3/4 months you still have loads of time.