New Thame football stadium gets go-ahead from Thame council

YESTERDAY was ‘a momentous’ day for Thame, says the Chair of Thame Town Council’s Planning committee, which has given its approval to a proposed new football stadium and associated facilities for the town.
Cllr Don Butler, the Chairman of the committee, today told ThameNews.Net: “The committee was very impressed with the quality of this application. It has been well thought out and it is obvious that a lot of hard work had gone into it.
“I believe that the whole project will be a tremendous boon to aspiring young footballers and that Thame will be extremely proud of what will no doubt be a fantastic asset to the town.”

Addressing the committee last night(Tues 19.02),Tim Green, the Chairman of Thame Boys and Girls, part of the Thame Football Partnership, said: “This application is the next step to fulfilling our vision.”

Nigel Hargreavies from the Football Association also supported the application, saying that it would bring together junior and senior players, amounting to 23 teams, and bring enormous benefit in fitness and social advantages to the whole community. He commended the volunteers and particularly the Chairman of Thame United and the Thame Football Partnership, Jake Collinge for their “extraordinary work over the last two years.
He explained that the project had the support of two, independent Board members who bring their financial and commercial expertise to make sure that the it is managed in “an ethical and corporately responsible way.”

The new proposed facility would be on the 20-acre Church Farm site on the northern edge of Thame. The main complex comprises a clubhouse with community facilities/function rooms, changing rooms, offices, corporate board room for match day hospitality, a large function facility for up to 250 people and community changing rooms.
Extra facilities would include an external marquee to create additional function room space thereby facilitating wider community use of the facilities. As well as a main floodlit football pitch, the plans would also incorporate a 40m x 30m 3G floodlit artificial pitch (AGP), three additional full-size grass pitches and four small size pitches.

All members of the committee welcomed and recommended approval of the scheme, although Cllr David Laver said that he would like to see more planting to provide more screening to the north and west of the site and hoped that the flood lighting would be an improvement on that at the old Windmill Road site which he said lit up properties around the ground.
Cllr Lionel Morbey said that he would like to see double the number of cycle parking places to 15.

The district council has received 100 letters of support for the scheme and nine objections, the latter raising concerns about flood lighting, parking and noise from functions in the proposed marquee.

The scheme will shortly go before South Oxfordshire District Council who have the final ‘say so’ as to whether the scheme can go ahead. But the building cannot go ahead until a housing development plan for Thame United’s old ground in Windmill Road, Thame, is approved, and