A SEARCH for a new football ground to replace the old one used by Newbury Football Club will begin in the new year. 

The club left the football ground on the London Road Industrial Estate in June 2018, and it has been left empty since then. 

The land will most likely be used for new flats, as part of the redevelopment of the industrial estate which will also include new offices. 

Bill Bagnell, manager of special projects at West Berkshire Council, is recommending that the old football clubhouse now be demolished. 

Despite a campaign to reopen the football ground, he said instead it should be used ‘as an informal area of grassland for general sports and recreational use’, until that land is needed to build flats on. 

He said the council should appoint consultants in the new year to replace the lost football ground elsewhere in Newbury. 

The council executive will vote on whether to approve his suggestions at a public meeting on December 19. 

In a report to that meeting, Mr Bagnell said it would cost £30,000 to convert the football pitch into open grassland surrounded by a timber post and rail fence, and remove the existing timber and chain link fence.

Whereas it would cost £208,000 to reopen the old clubhouse and changing rooms on the football ground, he said. Reopening the football clubhouse would be too expensive and ‘jeopardise redevelopment’ of the LRIE, which is an ‘important council aspiration’.

The football ground is one fifth of the developable land on the LRIE, and the council needs this land to build flats on to pay for the redevelopment. 

The council started to look at regenerating the LRIE in 2011, and started to look at moving the football club out in 2012. The lease for the football ground terminated June 2016, and after a two-year extension to the lease, the football club left the ground in in June 2018. 

At the same meeting of the executive, councillors will vote on whether to spend £85,000 appointing consultants to write a new development brief and masterplan for the LRIE. 

Mr Bagnell said the council could go ahead with plans to redevelop LRIE without finding a replacement football pitch, as the loss would be ‘very substantially outweighed by the public benefit of regenerating the LRIE’. 

He added: “However, the council is proceeding on the basis of securing a long-term sustainable replacement football facility within Newbury.”