Two of York’s sports clubs are to get a new home after long-awaited plans for a new stadium were given the go-ahead by councillors at a crunch meeting yesterday. A Yorkshire Post report.

York City FC and York Knights can celebrate as their long journey towards new stadium seems to be at the very last straight. Yesterday the city council’s planning committee gave their final go-ahead to the York Community Stadium project.

Sophie McGill, York City’s communications and community director was thrilled with the progress. “This has been ongoing since 2004 and it means that we can now progress and the stadium can be built and hopefully it will be completed for our move into the new facility in 2016 in preparation for the 2016/2017 football season”, she said.

© York Community Stadium

The new 8,000-capacity stadium will take roughly a year to construct, which makes the mid-2016 relocation date for York City possible. General contractors were already selected in January and groundbreaking is now a matter of weeks.

The planning application, considered by the council yesterday, includes a community stadium at the site in Monks Cross on the edge of York together with shops, restaurants, a 12-screen cinema, a leisure centre and an outdoor sports area, including three five-a-side football pitches.