Widnes Football Club is sad to announce that the club has withdrawn its planning application for the redevelopment of the former Corpy Club on Dundalk Road.

We embarked on this process over six years ago and despite lots of delays and obstacles we were fully focused on bringing the plans to fruition.

However, this is no longer a possibility.
Rising building costs for the refurbishment of the dilapidated building and football related improvements alongside planning requirements now make the scheme unviable.

The development was never a real viable business decision to upgrade the site with just a 36-year lease from Halton Borough Council (HBC) anyway, but it would now just be madness to try and progress it further.

We were involved in a mind numbing lease negotiation for around four years followed by two planning applications with the latter now being withdrawn.

Issues with parking are the biggest issue we cannot overcome at the site.

HBC Highways Department insist that we should have car park provision mirroring the 13000 capacity Halton Stadium in parking spaces, provide double yellow lines and a knee rail along Dundalk Road the length of the site to discourage verge parking along that route. We argued that there are no such parking control measures at ANY other venues in the borough but it didn’t matter.

Admittedly we could have ploughed on further but our current investment of over £40,000 would have escalated to over £70,000 with most of the specialists reports and surveys needing recommissioning given the delays we have endured.

If we could have then convinced Sport England to allow us to build over the old bowling greens and parking restrictions, the costs of additional parking spaces would be too much for a community scheme to endure on land that would always be HBC-owned and protected by the fields in trust.

Our recent title win and subsequent promotion have exacerbated the situation further with a larger capacity being required for the new division meaning that a new planning application would need to be submitted and with the bigger numbers, creating even more issues surrounding parking.

In addition, three prominent local ward councillors have publicly objected to the scheme based on ‘increased traffic, parking issues and loss of amenity’.

Our local Labour MP Derek Twigg, who once publicly backed the scheme photographed in the local newspaper, has, since the three councillors publicly objected, now relayed to the club that he doesn’t get involved in planning applications.

No matter how many of the Highways recommendations we completed at the site, the planning decision would be left to local councillors on planning committee to decide its fate.

Although only 23 objections were received, disappointingly, at a club of over 700 players, countless parents, coaches and extended family, the club only managed to garner 272 letters of support and that was really deflating for us all.

It is with all of these things considered that we have decided that it really isn’t worth trying to progress it any further.

The club never asked for any funding from HBC for the site or its development and yet we felt that we never really had the support other local sports clubs have had from HBC, despite Widnes Football Club being the sole respondent when the lease was advertised.

It’s a sad state that whilst the commissioning of an FA report - The Social and Economic value of Widnes Football Club – reveals how our scheme would have brought over £3.9 Million in social value every year to the local community, the club are facing an uncertain longer-term future once again.

Everton Football Club, alongside supportive efforts from Liverpool City Council, have just had a fantastic stadium built accommodating almost 53000 spectators with minimal parking provision… where there’s a will there’s a way.