Basingstoke FC unveil plan for leisure park move
The club has also held talks with the new council leadership
Last updated 17th Oct 2023
Basingstoke Town Community FC has unveiled new community stadium plans.
Since February the club say they've spent a lot of time and effort developing a fully-costed business plan for a new community stadium at Basingstoke Leisure Park and are urging relevant parties to bring the plans to reality.
The club have held initial talks with the new leaders at Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council over recent weeks and presented them with our progress and our business plan which calls on utilising section 106 funds from the loss of The Camrose and other available grants and funding sources.
The new plans include a purpose-built community stadium with classrooms for our full-time education football Academy, a clubhouse and a 3G pitch for teams across the club to be able to use to progress and to be able to continue our own year-on-year growth whilst also having facilities that can be offered to other users within the local community.
Chairman Jack Miller said:
“The on-going upgrade works to Winklebury Football Complex will allow our first team to play matches at our current level and maintain our short-term aspirations but without further significant investment to Hampshire FA’s facility, we are unable to progress further there.”
“We will continue talks with relevant parties to ensure the club is doing everything it can to bring our plans to fruition but felt it was important at this stage that our aspirations are again made known to a wider audience.
“As one of the highest populated towns in the country without a football league team, the potential at our club is there and the recent growth across the club as a whole has been clear to see but in order to take the club to the next level, we need a home of our own and for that we need support and backing.”
Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council Co-Leader Cllr Gavin James said:
“We were really pleased to meet with the club who presented their business plan. It was good to see the progress they are making and we look forward to further discussions with them.
“The Cabinet remains committed to exploring options to secure the long-term future of the club. We said we would listen and we are.
“At this time the options for the future of the Leisure Park are being carefully considered.”
The club are now publicly calling on Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council and any potential investors/partners to work with the club to progress this project to the next level to ensure the club has a home of it’s own once again; a like-for-like stadium to mitigate the loss of The Camrose, a community facility that will meet the aspirations of the club.