A Big Thank You

By: GTFC
Date: 02/02/2007

GRIMSBY Town chairman John Fenty hopes to have full planning permission for the Great Coates stadium before the end of the current season.

After securing a landslide 'yes' to outline permission, the Town chief was elate with the outcome and would like to thank all the people who made it possible.

"We are absolutely delighted with the outcome of last night's committee meeting, achieving a resolution, support for a new stadium. A vote of 10 to 1 was absolutely fabulous," he said.

"It outstripped our wildest imagination and we couldn't be more pleased.

"What was clear was that the councillors had individually studied the proposals and clearly they had given huge consideration to the motion. In their individual summing up, you could not be anything less than impressed, with this knowledge of the scheme. We were delighted to have achieved their overwhelming support

"There has been lots and lots of other support, and I would like to thank the following.

"The Fishy have done the football club phenomenally well and I think a special thank you should go to Billo - for all the work that and effort that he has put himself to. I would like to extend my specific thanks to Billo.

"MP's Shona McIssac, Ian Cawsey and Austin Mitchell have played a huge part in recent weeks, in terms of pledging their support, and sending their individual letters of support, which will go to the government office.

"As well as these, council and council officers have been superb in supporting the application and again our thanks go out to them for all their efforts, to get us to where we are today.

"Not least of all, the fans were spectacular last night. They held good order, they supported in the right places and they were impeccable in their behaviour.

"The Grimsby Telegraph have been outstanding in representing a fair and balanced view.

"The Gateway Team. They have been strategic partners and the team has been brought together to assist this project. Equally they have had a huge part to play in winning hearts and minds. Again we would like to extend out thanks to the Gateway Team.

"Last but not least, the efforts of the staff at the football club, and all their rallying round that has gone into this project in recent years. I would again like to extend my thanks to the staff - it's been a fantastic team effort."

Natural England's 11th hour reply - received yesterday - to a March 2006 consultation, has led to an agreement for Ray Oxby, executive director of environmental services for NELC, together with planning chair and vice chair Couns Phillip Jackson and Doug Pickett, to take all further steps to determine the application.

The chairman continued: "The council supported the resolution by 10 to 1; this was subject to concluding some further works regarding some wintering birds. We expect this to take approximately two months.

"After that time the application will go off to government office and we are hopeful that the government will sign off our proposals within one to three months.

"During this time we will be working tirelessly on working on retail proposals and taking soundings from key retailers who may become the so important anchor tenant that this project needs.

"We plan to do all this work out of the gaze of the public and to concentrate on our league position and to reverse our football fortunes."

"As much work that there is to do and there are many hurdles to overcome, a move into a new stadium by August 2009 isn't overly ambitious.

"Once again, thank you to everybody for all of their support in taking this project a huge step further."

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