The amended stadium design now officially has its green light. Not that it stopped Brentford and its partners from working on site for months now...

At the London Borough of Hounslow (LBH) Planning Committee meeting on Thursday, Councillors decided to approve planning amendments submitted for Brentford Community Stadium. Announced in August, the amendments in 2014's planning approval were officially submitted to LBH in September.

Crucial changes in the stadium's design can be summarised as scaling it down. The building was moved 3 meters south and saw size cuts on all sides. Both stands behind goals were reduced from two tiers to just one, similar effort took place in the south, where the main stand will be.

But while it sounds like a major change, reduction in capacity is modest, from 20,000 to 17,250 seats. At the same time the number of premium seating skyrocketed from 1,800 to 2,930.

While the stadium isn't officially under construction yet, physically works on the site at Lionel Road have been going on since March of 2017. Just in recent weeks a large building of the Capital Court was demolished, paving way for three of residential blocks planned along the stadium. Eventually over 900 homes will be created here, 487 of them in the first phase.

This week's planning permission from LBH is exactly in line with current schedule of the project. It should allow for official groundbreaking early into 2018 and completion of the stadium by the end of 2019.