PLANS for a stadium to be the new home of Worcester City Football Club have been backed by council planners.

The scheme includes a new stadium with car parking along with a hotel, offices, a pub/ restaurant and car and motorcycle showrooms on land east of Nunnery Way, Worcester.

If plans go ahead, the stadium would be up to 11 metres high with four 22.5m floodlights on a site of 2.4 hectares. The stadium would be on the south eastern quarter of the whole site adjacent to the A44 and M5.

Offices would be built adjacent to Nunnery Way and would take up 4,182 square metres with a maximum building height of 14.5 metres.

The hotel would take up 2,000 square metres while the pub would be 1,400 square metres and three further offices with a total of 5,952 metres could be built.

A new access would be created from Nunnery Way to a car park containing 743 spaces including 200 for the stadium alone.

The plans have been amended to create a central open space in the south, with buildings extending into a woodland setting in the north.

In a report prepared for a meeting of the planning committee on Thursday, January 5, Alan Coleman, the council’s development services manager, recommended the planning committee grant planning permission.

In his conclusion, he said the positive elements of the development outweighed the negative environmental impacts it would have.

However, the report also read: “Whether the club can afford to relocate to and remain at the proposed stadium remains unknown at this stage.”

The scheme must be referred to the secretary of state before permission can be granted.

Colin Layland, the club’s vice- chairman, said it was a step forward. He said: “As a board of directors we fully support the application. We need to find somewhere to move into in the next 18 months.

"We hope it will get passed but it will take a bit of time, especially if it gets called in by the secretary of state and there’s a public inquiry. It isn’t going to happen overnight.”