Our first house was on Silcoates Park, at the far end of the playing field (Aspen Close), so I know the area well...

It is bordered by the Silcoates Park estate on one side, Peacock estate on another, the Leeds-London railway line on another and Balne Lane on the fourth side. The only access to the site would be from Balne Lane with it's single-file railway bridge !!
The only place to park would be on Peacock Estate !!!
Total and complete non-starter and as stated above yet another time-wasting red herring from the morons at WMDC and their associated cronies

I see Walker's 'charitable' trust is still not registered, at least not that I can see.

I was cautiously optimistic before that bloaters name got mentioned. If he is any way involved, forget it !!!!

His involvement tells you all you need to know its another scam.

Yet again Peter Box poses on more land.

If he put as much effort into sorting out the stadium as he does having his photo taken I would be more than happy.

Then we hear that Rodney Walker is also very pleased with how things are shaping up but still hides behind a clandestine trust that lurks in the shadows.

When will our politicians clean up their acts and be more transparent. Their actions leave me in content of how they treat the citizens of Wakefield.

Thought we had told RW to bugger off

It's the perfect solution.

That is the perfect solution for a developer who needs to build a small, cheap community sports facility to cover an obligation, a college who wants a small, centrally based sports facility without over-streching itself financially and a current sports ground onwer who wants to fully redevelop said sports ground into something else entirely whilst also wanting to get a good deal on a piece of land in a public park owned by the aforementioned college. Not to mention a council who have been criticised over it's lack of sporting facilities removing it's burden of an over-grown piece of land that can only be used for community use. Wins all round.

Execpt for one party that is. Yep, the club. It is in no way suitable for development into a 10K capacity stadium, for starters the infrastructure just isn't there and neither is the capacity to increase it sufficiently. Also the locals would be less than impressed to say the least and would kick up a fair stink delaying the whole thing even further, something we cannot afford. Non- starter from our point of view but from a smaller development possibly which would finish us off, i wouldn't rule it out.

Would love to see a statement from the club, it's been a while. Even it is just to say we have not seen plans for the BV re-development yet and to confirm that this has been mentioned to them

No mate..if you look closely, Box's photo has just been superimposed over the top of it...I bet he doesn't even know where the field is as it's nowhere near Cas

Me too mate, but I have a funny feeling that the plans for the re-development of Belle Vue will not involve a rugby stadium !!

There are several points here. I grew up on Balne Lane and spent most of my time on those playing fields which we used to call "The Tips". It may sound like a peculiar name until you realise that that is just what they were at one time - the council rubbish dump!. Once they had got to a suitable level some soil was dumped on top and playing fields created. This was back in the late 40's, early 50's. They were then OK for a long time with football and rugby pitches, a cricket pitch (tarmac!) and a building for changing rooms. Eventually it fell into disrepair due to lack of maintenance. Many, many years later I worked at Wakefield College and I was asked if I knew anything about the playing fields. I think that the college owned them at that point and was looking at selling them off as building land to get some money. However there was this clause about community use. The problem for the college was they couldn't be used as sports fields due to broken glass, tin cans and all sorts of other stuff from the council tip days being exposed by erosion etc. It would have been too expensive to dig it out to a sufficient depth, make sure there weren't any nasties like asbestos in it and then deposit an enormous amount of topsoil on it. In the end nothing happened and the site is as it is at the moment - a right headache for whoever owns it. I reckon that the cost of "rehabilitating" the land would be too much for anyone given the covenant on the land.

The next point is access. The streets around the site are all very narrow with a limited number of approaches. At Belle Vue you can approach from 4 different directions with ease. With Balne Lane playing fields there is only Balne Lane itself which is not very wide and has on street parking. There is no road to the fields themselves, only a small lane with a bridge that could not take the weight (literally and figuratively) of the traffic. It is wide enough for one car width and would probably collapse under weight of a decent 4x4!

Linked to that point is the access from town via Balne Lane. There is a bridge under the main Westgate - Leeds main line. This isn't wide enough for 2 cars to pass in compfort and give way markings have been put on the down side to avoid problems. Anyone who goes that way at rush hour can tell you what a problem it is. It could not carry all the match day traffic from the north of the city. From other direction traffic would have to go through Flanshaw Estate, again with narrow roads. There is no way that any planning officer could approve such a plan without enormous road changes with (probably) astronomic expense. WMDC doesn't have that kind of money.

I could go on but it's becoming an essay rather than a post so I'll shut up now except to say it seems a load of b******s!

I'm sorry but this strikes me as a nonsense article and I hope the only reason for its release is to buy the council a little more time until they reveal some lovely plans of a shiney community stadium at Belle Vue....

Nobody in there right mind can consider Balne Lane a suitable location and suggesting it as such leaves me baffled!

I too would urge the club to release a statement outlining the current state of play and tell the fans what is going on as I don't think anybody would believe a word that comes from the council. We have had next to no useful information from anyone since the new year and whilst some people think that no news is good news....im starting to think otheriwse.

The community facilities could be at Balne Lane and the community stadium could be at Belle Vue.
and keep RW away from it!

Can't wait to see some new artistic impressions of what we could have won...yay...

What is the point of the council coming out with story?? Total none starter and SRW gets a mention with his fantasy ‘trust’ . Just another dagger into the history of our club! We deserve so much better...