Luton manager Graeme Jones believes the football club will overcome the obstacles to building a new 17,500-seat stadium at Power Court despite a new legal threat to the Hatters’ other Newlands Park development.
Plans for both sites received permission from Luton Council earlier this year, though the mixed-use scheme at junction 10 of the M1, which would help finance the club’s new ground, has come up against persistent objections from Capital & Regional, the owners of The Mall shopping centre.
Despite the Secretary of State also giving the application his seal of approval, by not calling it in, the retail group have now signalled their intent to apply to the High Court for a judicial review, claiming that the ‘grant of the planning permission was unlawful’ and that it should therefore be ‘quashed’.
A letter sent to the council on behalf of Capital & Regional, by law firm Eversheds Sutherland, calls on the planning authority to reconsider their decision, otherwise they will make their application to the High Court.
A judge would still have to decide if their submission could go forward for a full judicial review but, if it did, the worst-case scenario would be that the original planning permission for Newlands Park would be quashed.
That would require permission to be applied for again, with the process already past the three-year mark to get to this stage. That would mean further delays to the major regeneration of Luton town centre and a blow to the plans for the football club to move into a new stadium.
Talking about the long-awaited prospect of a new home for the Hatters, Jones said: “That’s the long-term future of the club. We all want that. The supporters, board of directors, the staff, there’s never a smooth route with any kind of planning application, whether that’s a house or a stadium.
“In the short-term, I’m just concentrating on Bristol City. For everybody, in the long-term, we want to get to that point to be able to compete.
“Certainly, budget-wise, it would improve things and make you stronger in the marketplace, but that’s so far down the line for a football manager that I’m thinking about Bristol City at home, really and nothing else.”
Luton’s rapid rise through the Football League to the Championship, on the back of consecutive promotions, has seen them enter one of the richest leagues in the world, where they are currently unable to compete financially with the vast majority of the rival clubs in the division.
However, the Hatters are one of the few clubs in the Championship not operating under massive debts and Jones added: “We’ll always run a sensible ship here with Gary (Sweet, chief executive) and the board of directors.
“I like reality. I don’t like it getting out of hand. I could tell you some Championship salaries that would scare you. I don’t like that. I like to be realistic.
“But it would be nice for us to show off our fanbase. We took 42,000 people to Wembley not so long ago (for the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy Final in 2008), so it shows the size of this football club. Just at the minute, we haven’t got a stadium to house that.
“I think, long-term, we want that, the football club wants that and I’m sure the club will make it happen.
“It would be nice to get transported to that point and sit in a new stadium now, but that’s never the case, so you’ve got to jump though these hoops. It’s a process we’re in as a football club, but if you think about how far we’ve come, to how little we’ve got to go, I’m sure that we’ll overcome those obstacles.”
