Well that doesn't sound good at all. I just hope the club are going to be truthful about the way forward rather than tell us everything is ok and not to worry.

It actually says..

Wakefield Council has retracted its offer of £2m worth of land assets to both Castleford Tigers and Wakefield Wildcats' Community Trust"

They withdrew the land asset deal a long time ago and replaced it with a cash deal, paid for by the refund from the icelandic bank fiasco. So whilst the report is technically right the new deal may still be live.

Alternatively maybe a new deal is under negotiation that will see the council become official partners in the development and direct all available monies to it.

Either way the council know that by law they have to provide more facilities for the district. If they pull out it will cost them a damn site more than £2m to come up with them.

Is there any impact on Newmarket and the likelihood that it will be built as a result of Wakefield MDC's withdrawal of funding for Glasshoughton?

TRB has sought some clarity on the issue and this is what we understand is the situation.

Both WMDC offers are time-bound and, as they have been previously, the offers need to be reviewed, approved and then renewed by cabinet on an a regular ongoing basis, again, as they have been previously. So the current £2m offers have, in effect, expired as they have gone passed the deadline set by cabinet last time the offers were extended/renewed. However, Castleford have been told that it is highly unlikely that the current offer, which purely relates to the GH proposals, will be renewed by cabinet when they next meet, as there hasn't been any progress and it looks like Cas are looking at the upgrading WR now instead. This would of course require a new deal and offer to be made by WMDC and as details are yet not known, this is not likely to happen until there is more detail. As such, they are not going to renew Castleford's current GH offer.

Equally, the next cabinet meeting is in early April and it is highly likely the offer on Newmarket will indeed be again renewed, not least because they are party to a Section 106 agreement will references this contribution and progress continues to be made on Newmarket.

So, Castleford's GH offer is not being renewed but the WMDC offer of financial support for Cas it is not off the table completely, either for GH or maybe WR, but until more progress or detail is known a new offer is unlikely to be made.

Also, WMDC are not planning, at this stage, to redirect the offer made to GH to Newmarket, so as TRB's has posted, nothing has and is not going to change in respect of Newmarket at this point.

Dont know mate, but what i can say is, i am fed up of hearing that we will get the ground, we will not get the ground.some one must know at the club, but will they tell us, i dont think so. with out it we are shafted

IA you can't post stuff like that - what will the conspiracy theorists on CasForum vent their spleen about now?

Actually, I know the answer already - it will be you and TRB are making it all up as part of a WMDC led cover up!!

I don't think it is helped by the Wakey/Ponte & Cas Express who are running with a story that would appear to actually be not much of a story at all (which has been hinted at earlier in this thread). They also don't appear, given what we are being told and understand, to have either grasped of even been given/obtained the overall 'picture' themselves.

We understand that they are going to print with a similar story in the Wakefield Express tomorrow, just written from a different angle of course.

Par for the course with most journalists and papers TBH. Always look to sensationalise something often without doing proper research beforehand

Its not on the front cover at least.

I think you are being optimistic there IA if you think wmdc will be bringing anything positive forward to cabinet in April. I refer to my earlier post on page 2, we live in unprecedented times in terms of public sectors cut backs. I dont see mention in the recent council budget report, 27feb, that leads me to think any differently. Priorities have changed. Im sure future wmdc help will not be financial, hope I'm wrong.

It is not what we are being told but equally it still has to go before the next cabinet meeting so we will see what happens then. The money for both clubs, we again understand, will ultimately be made available from WMDC's Icelandic Bank refund money after the Icelandic bank collapse. As such, this money is not within budget & sits in surplus. As such, giving either club the money will have no impact on council spending or budgets. The only argument for not using this surplus cash for this purpose would be that the council should use this money to prop up items that they have been forced to cut from the budget by central government cuts. So it is this, nothing, or something else, nothing will suffer as a direct result if this money was made to either club.

Reserved matters to go in by 4th April according to Jimmy Elston. Bit quicker than we were expecting and should hopefully give the council a nudge to renewing the deal.

We understand so and they are on track to meet that date we are told. Once the reserved matters are in, and then approved of course, that is the whole planning side of things done and dusted.

Go on then i'll ask. Any chance that it won't be anything other than a virtual formality?

Assuming they don't want to paint it and outrageous colour, you know, something like black and amber, then it is just a formality.

Thanks for the information IA.

I'm seeking a bit of clarity here. The £2 million, wasn't that in the form of land to borrow money against and in essence a loan?

Come off it, we all know they'll never be a new stadium built anywhere in those colours!

It was originally and then it became a cash offer from this pot of money.

Thankyou IA, i must have missed that update. So in reality, providing we satisfy the council with our plans, progression and predicted completion date in April we should essentially still be able to tap into these funds?

As such, they haven't been withdrawn from either club just the original date has expired and thus must be reevaluated to determine whether they are appropriate for either team

And obviously the longer it goes without it being used, the more likely it is that it will get spent on something else. So sooner the plans are passed the better.

That element of the deal ended a while ago. Now we are talking about investment directly from the council. It's not as if the council won't themselves benefit from the scheme overall in terms of rates etc, and we have helped them achieve that!

Spot on!

Wouldn't rule anything in or out in terms of what may or may not be on offer from the council. I'm sure there are twists and turns in this stadium saga still to come.

In these times of spending cuts it just goes to show what a pipe dream the 60 odd million council funded Thrones Park Stadium would have been.

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No doubt we'll still have a few hurdles to jump but the council will do what they need to do for the city of Wakefield and all its residents.