All parties left in limbo as minister told to settle fate

Oxford City Council, which wants the stadium preserved, and planning agent Savills, which wants to demolish it for homes, have both taken their cases to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

A crunch decision on the demolition, due to be made next Monday, has been postponed indefinitely.

Mr Pickles will decide whether Savills can knock it down without having to carry out impact tests.
If Savills is forced into measuring the potential impact of the development, the true scale of loss it would cause could derail the plans.

A spokesman for Savills said: “The application is effectively on hold while we wait for clarification. There is nothing more to add at this stage.”

The council said the developers risk causing “irreversible and lasting damage” and said they had underestimated the importance of the stadium to the city.

It wrote to Savills last Tuesday to state the site was a heritage asset and, as a result, Savills must carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment.

But the developer has written to Mr Pickles to reject the request.

A council spokesman said: “The applicant has challenged this and is asking the relevant Government department to decide if an Environmental Impact Assessment is required.”

He said in the meantime the application for demolition, and a second application for the overall development, were both on hold.

Council leader Bob Price said: “We are taking a strong line against any form of development on the site, which has been a hugely important part of the community for such a long time. There is no case for demolition and we want to see it remain as a leisure facility.”

A spokesman for Mr Pickles’s office said the situation was not uncommon in big developments, and that he would take about three weeks to make a decision.

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith said he felt the developers were attempting a “fait accompli” in which they would knock down the stadium before anyone had a chance to properly defend it.

He said he had also written to Mr Pickles for backing.

Mr Smith said: “It is totally against the public interest and the views of local people for them to want to demolish the stadium.

“This will only strengthen the resolve of campaigners and all who care for the facilities there to save the stadium, and get it into the hands of an owner who recognises the enormous value and potential of the stadium and its facilities for sport and recreation.”

In the letter to Savills, the council’s development control leader Martin Armstrong wrote: “The overall effect of demolition will be significant, irreversible and difficult or impossible to repair or compensate for, both in terms of the permanent loss of social and cultural opportunities both for the local community and the wider Oxfordshire area and the loss of employment primarily for local people in an already deprived area.”

Save Oxford Stadium campaign group chairman Ian Sawyer said: “We are ramping up our fight now. We will also be lobbying Eric Pickles to show that this facility can never be replaced.

“Once it is gone it will be gone forever, it’s not the kind of thing that can just pop up anywhere and the developers need to know what they are playing with.”

Sam Clifton, owner of Dance Connections, which helped launch the petition to save the stadium, added: “We are all in limbo. Now this means there will be even more delays, when people want answers.”

Uncertainty over the stadium’s fate has also been fuelled by silence from Irish racing entrepreneur Paschal Taggart.

Mr Taggart, who is responsible for big changes to the racing industry in Ireland, announced he had plans to save the stadium, but was unavailable for comment when approached by the Oxford Mail yesterday.

The stadium held its last day of racing on December 29 and site owners the Greyhound Racing Association emptied it of all its fixtures and fittings.

Galliard Homes has applied for permission to build 220 homes on the site.