Greens hope to slay Giant Axe proposals LANCASTER City Football Club is being asked to drop plans for a £5 million super stadium by green campaigners in the area. Earlier this year, the club announced ambitious plans to transform their modest West Road home into a massive community sports complex by the year 2000. They are hoping to convince National Lottery bosses to help them out with the multi-million pound development. Now the results of a Lancaster Green Party survey, which has provoked an angry response from club chiefs, could have thrown a spanner in the works.

The campaigners are concerned that the development will engulf the open field next to the football ground and say only 18 per cent of residents living near Giant Axe want it to go ahead.

That figure came after a house-to-house survey involving people living on West Road, Hubert Place, Furness Street, Long Marsh Lane and Mallard Court.

A spokesman for the Green Party said: "The main reason given for opposing the lottery bid was that people valued the field as a recreational area. It was mentioned on numerous occasions that it was the only green space in the vicinity.

"In the light of these findings we believe that the football club should withdraw their bid and that any applications for planning permission should be rejected by the council."

But Lancaster City chairman John Bagguley remained defiant. He told the Citizen: "That field isn't for use as recreational space, it is leased to the football club by the council. There is plenty of other green space in the Marsh area anyway.

"Some of the things these people suggest instead are already in our plans. If they people had bothered to speak to me they would have known that.

"It seems that we are the only ones who haven't been asked about this survey and I think it has been carried out in an abysmal way.

"If these people had bothered to come and see me I would have taken them through our ideas and those of other people who have contacted us. This is not just a football development but something designed to benefit the whole community."

Mr Bagguley promised future consultation with people in the whole of the Marsh area and added that applications for planning permission and lottery funding had not yet been made by the club.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.