Thriving Peterborough football club receive planning permission for new clubhouse

The plans were submitted to the council in March as their old clubhouse, the Parkway Sports & Leisure Club in Lincoln Road, New England, was sold by Parkway PSL Ltd to Thistlemoor Medical Practice. 
A new two-storey building and additional parking will now be built on the site by the surgery’s owners. 
The leisure club was home to several darts, crib and snooker clubs as well as Peterborough Sports, who play in the Southern League Premier Central, step 3 of non-league football. 
The plans that have been approved are for a new clubhouse where the club’s Eaglesthorpe pitch currently sits, with the academy pitch being turned around to accommodate the new facility. 
Plans also include a new hospitality suite, medical room, TV gantry, netting to stop balls entering neighbouring properties, grandstand seating and changing facilities.
By increasing the number of seats in each of the seated stands to 250, the club’s Bee Arena will meet the standards required to play at step 2, should they be promoted in the future. 
To help pay for these works, the club has received a grant in the region of £90,000 from the Football Foundation and have been holding their own fundraising efforts. 

Club Chairman Grant Biddle also confirmed on Twitter that the club has reached an agreement with PCC to extend the current lease on the ground by a further 17 years, taking the total left to run to 53 years. 
He said: “We are delighted that we have received the green light from the Council to start this project.
“Since the closure of the PSL club we have been in a state of flux and with having to deal with the implications of Covid as well the matchday experience for our fans has not been as good as we would like.
“We will be starting the build as soon as we can and certainly hope that the clubhouse will be open before Christmas as long as the weather remains kind to us.
“We are grateful to the Football Foundation for their support towards the majority of the costs and to the efforts of our fundraising team, particularly Martin Rippingale, who have done a sterling job over the last 12 months in raising funds for the Club.
“This permission would allow us to meet all the ground improvement requirements for the league above where we currently play so will put us in a position to continue the development on the field we have seen over the last decade.” 
Peterborough Sports are in action this Saturday at 3pm (October 3) as they host Stansted in the FA Cup Second Qualifying Round.