Leamington Football Club's long wait for a new stadium is set to be extended, with doubt cast over whether it will happen at all.

The Brakes have been working with Warwick District Council for more than a decade to get a new centrally-located base off the ground with land allocated near to Fusiliers Way. 

The stadium is the third element of development scheduled to follow Myton Path – a footpath and cycleway connecting Myton Road and Fusilier's Way – and a new athletics facility. Those projects form part of a wider masterplan for the area. 

Initial design work shows a 4,000-capacity ground with an artificial pitch and the inclusion of community uses around fitness, parent and toddler, education and health provision. 

In March 2024, fans were presented with a vision including detailed floor plans for a three-storey main stand with a view to starting construction in January 2027 in time for the Brakes to open in July 2028.

However, earlier this month, the cabinet – the panel of Green and Labour councillors in charge of major service areas – approved a revised list of projects to be funded by the council's community infrastructure levy (CIL) receipts, which is money paid by housing developers. 

The football stadium remains in line for £5 million towards the project but not until the financial years 2027-28 (£1.5m) and 2028-29 (£3.5m).

Political choice?

The delay has left Cllr Andrew Day, leader of Warwick District Council until May 2023, furious. 

Alongside the ongoing churn of CIL money, the district council has an estimated £90.2 million coming over the next 25 years in Local Growth Initiative (LGI) funding.

That is money set to come from the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) as part of the investment zone deal. Both bodies have to agree to the list of projects by March 2026.

The list agreed by the cabinet includes new low-carbon housing, retrofitting council homes to be more energy efficient and helping private owners to do so as well, working on the transformation of Leamington Town Centre and community infrastructure.

The community infrastructure element includes money towards Myton Path and the athletics facility but not the football stadium and there is controversy over the scale of spending on other priorities.

Details and financial totals are part of confidential papers, but Cllr Day let slip at the meeting of cabinet that £10 million was being earmarked for environmental standards over and above net zero on new council housing at Leyes Lane and Rouncil Lane, Kenilworth. 

"Some of the projects have been delayed further now, particularly the community stadium," he said.

"That £5 million on the CIL wishlist is a relatively small sum. Who knows what it will be by the time it is properly costed, I do take that point, but it is a question of balance when you are allocating £10 million towards enhancing over and above our DPD standard for housing on Rouncil Lane and Leys Lane."

When reminded about the confidential elements, Cllr Day withdrew the comment but added: "Leamington FC is way more than a football club, the community benefits of this stadium would be significant. I would ask the cabinet to reflect on the priorities in making these very difficult, balancing decisions, prioritising new projects over projects that were promised to residents 10 or more years ago." 

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Cllr Day highlighted a series of interlinked issues. As well as the benefits of a stadium, Leamington's current base is earmarked to be used as a much-needed gypsy and traveller site, a "fundamental" commitment within the current local plan.

On top of that, he argues that Passivhaus environmental standards are "unproven in terms of suitability for council housing".

"A lot of residents have trouble complying, it is quite a disciplined process," he said, insisting the council should get on with putting up the homes to the council's agreed net zero standard to bring down housing waiting list quicker and shorten the period that it is paying £158,000 per year in interest on the money borrowed to acquire the sites.

"Leamington is an amazing football club, their community work is outstanding and frankly they deserve better than to wait until 2028 before funding is allocated – that would mean it would be some years later that it would actually get built," said Cllr Day. 

"We have had the design work done, it is pretty much ready to go in for planning. That money is already spent and I supported it right through the process.

"We had to do Myton Path and the athletics track first and I'm pleased the community centre has now been approved but to stop short now runs the risk of us never seeing it through, particularly with the prospect of a unitary council coming in. We are missing a massive opportunity.

"I am hugely disappointed at the focus on Kenilworth over other areas, the betrayal of residents in Warwick and Leamington over projects they were promised in the 2017 local plan and frankly the very NIMBY view of not progressing gypsy and traveller provision as agreed.

"I think they are putting gold-plated environmental standards ahead of promises that were made for community facilities. This was a big promise and the stadium has so many benefits over and above football and the great work Brakes already do in the community.

"It is the crankiest I have felt about anything since this administration took charge."

The response

Cllr Day's call to consider greater priority for local plan commitments was echoed in feedback from the council's overview and scrutiny committee. 

At the cabinet meeting, Cllr Jim Sinnott said the comments were "worthy of thought and do not fall on deaf ears" and while current leader Cllr Ian Davison confirmed in-principle support for the stadium, he insisted no promises had ever been made.

"If there has been any commitment that this is going to happen, whoever made that, that is foolish because it has never been that advanced," he told cabinet.

"This administration has certainly never made that as a commitment. What we are doing is our best to get it to happen. 

"On the Fusiliers Way project, there are lots of bits that interact… We are working pretty hard to get it to happen but that is not the same as making a promise and I hope nobody has done that yet."

The Local Democracy Reporting Service put to Cllr Davison that a decision had been made by someone somewhere to push back the funding allocations beyond the target opening date.

He said he would have to look into those differences but acknowledged the timescales set out to fans would be "extremely challenging", stressing again the commitment to seeing what could be done but stopping short of a promise to deliver. He said a report is due to be addressed in September's cabinet meeting – it was initially due to come forward in September 2024.

Cllr Davison said he "absolutely gets" that fans will be frustrated, adding:

"Leamington is a great club, we do want to see if we can facilitate a move closer to town and we are doing what we can."

He said the reason for not using LGI money for the football stadium was because those plans are "less developed".

"We don't have a plan we can share with the combined authority for that because it is at an earlier stage. It would be more likely to be rejected in our opinion," he said. 

On Cllr Day's assertion that stadium plans had been ready to go for a long time, Cllr Davison said: "If the stadium has been kicked down the road for many years, most of those were prior to the current administration.

"While we have been around, we have moved very fast on the stadium, the Myton path and the athletics stadium which moves things along. 

"To begin with it was a big and amorphous project, it was very hard to work out priorities and get it going. You could say that was why it was kicked down the road for a long time, because they didn't have it sorted.

"We are addressing that and moving as fast as we can on the footpath and athletics facility to break that deadlock."

Cllr Day responded to say these claims were "disingenuous", reiterating that the project was left ready to head to planning when the council changed hands.