Football club aiming for spring to start work on £300k new home
RISHTON United FC could start work on their new £300,000 playing fields development by March next year.
Club bosses are hopeful of securing the remaining funding needed for the project by the end of this year and will look to begin work in the spring.
The Observer reported earlier this year that Hyndburn council has approved a 25-year lease of Norden Playing Fields to the football club, which will become their new home ground.
Chic Kelly, chairman of Rishton United, said: “We have got the lease approved and it is with the council.
“The main organisation we are talking to at the moment is the Lancashire FA to secure £100,000.
“We hope to tie that up in the next three months.
“Once that is done then we should have most of the money we need so we can then start looking at what work needs to be done and putting things out to tender.”
Mr Kelly hopes that should be done ‘by October or November’.
He added: “There may be a shortfall of about £20,000 or £30,000 but the club will make up for that.
“We are doing fundraising things within the club, including the recent Rotary walk, and we are organising a sportsman’s dinner.
“I really can’t see us starting the work in the winter time. I’d anticipate the work starting around March next year.”
Mr Kelly, who has been working on the scheme for several years, said there is now ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
He added: “It’s taken longer than I thought it would when we first started doing it. When you are applying for funding there are various protocols and red tape you have to go through and certain things you have to be compliant with. It has been a really, really long strenuous exercise but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that makes you plod along a little bit more.”