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CHAIRMAN Nicholas Randall QC says Nottingham Forest still hope to get planning permission for the redevelopment of the City Ground by the end of the summer.
Work had been due to begin 12 months ago, starting with knocking down and rebuilding the Peter Taylor Stand. But that was put on hold due to delays in the planning process.
The club then submitted their revised planning application to Rushcliffe Borough Council in June, with a decision yet to be made.
Owner Evangelos Marinakis has already spent more than £2m directly related to the plans, and Randall has provided an update on the project’s progress.
“We all know we have to develop. We know the status quo is not good enough,” he told the BBC.
“I know previous ownerships have looked at this issue. Some of them came up with answers which were to move to a different site.
“We always felt we needed to be here. It’s a unique and a special place.
“Even the harshest critic of the club would take their hat off to that and say, ‘this is a wonderful place to play and watch football.’
“We thought, ‘we must do what we can to stay here.’
“There are consequences to that, because unlike virtually every other football stadium in the country, we are in the middle of a bourgeois residential area.
“There are consequences in relation to how quickly you can move the number of different, to use that horrible phrase, stakeholders you have to look after.
“We’re not building a conservatory in a back garden, this is a major construction project in a prime residential area. We have to tread carefully and we have to take into account the sensitivities of others.
“Ironically, there’s a slight delay at the moment - but that delay is actually a very, very beneficial thing, because it is in relation to certain dealings, in relation to transport issues.
“We’ve had some very positive feedback, so the current short delay is a good sign rather than a bad sign.
“We are hoping that by the end of the summer we will have the planning permission. We are being advised that we are in a very strong position.
“The slight delay at the moment is actually a positive thing, rather than a negative thing.
“Once we’ve got the planning permission, we will assess when the best time to move forward is.
“I appreciate some people will say, ‘why haven’t you got all your contracts signed etc?.’
“With the greatest respect, that isn’t how it works. If we’d done that, we would probably be in trouble, because I think the price of timber has trebled, the price of concrete has gone up and the price of steel has gone up.
“It might have pleased some people at the time, but it would have been a ridiculously bad decision to have taken.
“In addition, you can’t get proper contractors to properly price the project until you’ve got planning permission. “That’s where we are. “It’s also partly a football decision. It will depend on where we are as to whether you want the main stand to be out of action for a period or not.
“If everything goes well this season and we got promoted, it may well be the football decision is, ‘you don’t want to knock your stand down in your first season, because you want to get the crowds in.’
“We also owe obligations to the fans as well, within that context, that people need to get back and see football.
“I appreciate it’s a politician’s answer, but it’s also a true one, we would build it at exactly the right time, when it’s correct for the football, correct for the fans and correct for the community.
“But clearly, we want to get on with it.”