York’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat Executive has unveiled a timeline for completion of the Community Stadium and confirmed the long-term future of Yearsley Pool.

The 8,000-seat Community Stadium will provide a permanent home for both York City Football Club and the York City Knights Rugby League Club as well as offering a range of leisure and retail facilities.

Under the previous Labour Council the stadium project was beset by procurement delays and missed budgets and was mired in a dispute with the York City Knights, leading to a failure to begin work on the project along with soaring legal costs. Labour also brought forward plans to cut funding for Yearsley Pool, which campaigners said would lead to the historic pool’s closure.

Since taking over control of the council in May the new Conservative-Lib Dem Executive has resurrected the agreement with the Knights, opened the athletics track at Heslington West and is now advancing plans to ensure the delivery of the stadium at Monks Cross. A paper to come before the Executive on the 27^th of August includes:

• A confirmed construction timetable with work to begin February/March 2016, the sports stadium to be operational in April/May 2017 and with the wider facilities to be completed in May/June 2017;
• The overall project to remain on-budget at the levels agreed by Labour last autumn;
• The bringing forward of pre-contract work to demolish the existing stadium and to extend the Park & Ride facilities at Monks Cross and
• A commitment to the future of Yearsley Pool, initially as part of the wider leisure contract with GLL.

Cllr Nigel Ayre, Liberal Democrat Executive Member for Leisure, Culture and Tourism, commented:

“It remains immensely frustrating that so little progress was achieved under Labour. They failed to lay a brick in the ground and left behind a project with a number of flaws. These included cuts to the funding for Yearsley Pool, a fractured relationship with the York City Knights and an overly complex procurement process which has meant the project couldn’t be delivered in time for the 2016-17 season. We have worked hard to sort out these issues and produce a new plan to deliver the Community Stadium as quickly as possible. This report shows progress is being made and I am pleased we are able to bring forward some of the key pre-contract work such as the Park & Ride extension. Crucially, our plans also secure the long-term future of the much-loved Yearsley Pool.”