Plans for a sports hub, including an FA-endorsed football pitch, on the site originally earmarked for the Stadium for Cornwall have taken a step nearer to completion.
Cornwall Council’s cabinet approved a recommendation that the new Truro Community Sports Hub is included as part of the 3,550-homes Langarth Garden Village development.
The hub will serve as a permanent home for Truro City Football Club, which currently doesn’t have a ground in Cornwall and plays over the border at Bolitho Park in Plymouth.
If planning permission is granted, the ground will accommodate a range of sports and community uses including a floodlit 3,000-capacity pitch and a second all-weather floodlit community sports pitch which would be used by neighbouring Threemilestone Football Club.
Cllr Louis Gardner, the council’s portfolio holder for the economy, said: “This is not just going to be a ground for Truro City Football Club, although the aim is to get the club back in there for the start of next season. Threemilestone Football Club has been mentioned and it is important they have a home, but there will be many more clubs involved In this as well.
“This genuinely will be a community facility. At a time when all developers are criticised for not putting infrastructure in when they do new house building, this is a clear signal that we’re putting the infrastructure in first into Langarth Garden Village.
"You can only build a community, not just by putting a load of houses in but by actually building the facilities which people can enjoy in their leisure time.”
He added: “This is a clear demonstration from Cornwall Council that we’re committed to Langarth being a community and not just a place for people to live.”
The Cornwall councillor for the Langarth area Dulcie Tudor added: “It’s been a long journey to get to this. That site has been problematic, but I’m pleased to see something happen.
"I appreciate how the council has found a way to kill three birds with one stone – for the community of Langarth, for the local surrounding communities and for Truro City Football Club.”
Cllr Tudor said she’s visited the site with representatives from the football club and local parish council. “You can’t see it from the road but it’s all going on up there.”
The sports hub would be on land owned by Cornwall Council and would be overseen by Langarth Garden Village Holdings LLP as the ‘master developer’. There are five planned phases for completion, which are as follows:
- Phases 1 and 2: Earthworks and pitch installation with construction planned from August 2023 to December 2023, using up to £2.03m of Treyew Road Section 106 funding from the sale of Truro City’s former ground to Lidl.
- Phase 3: A Football Association (FA) compliant pitch for use by TCFC to be in place for April 2024 FA inspection; construction January to March 2024. It is proposed to allocate up to £2.67m of the existing Langarth Garden Village budget to facilitate delivery of this phase.
- Phase 4: Community 3G pitch; construction likely in the latter half of 2024. Funding, delivery responsibilities and land ownership/lease arrangements to be confirmed, subject to future decisions.
- Phase 5: Clubhouse and community hub, construction likely in the last quarter of 2024 onwards, community hub subject to agreement of revised Phase 1 Community Facilities Strategy. Funding, delivery responsibilities and land ownership/lease arrangements to be confirmed, subject to future decisions and a separate planning application, likely in 2024.
There is an urgency to achieving the initial FA compliancy to enable Truro City to use the site from August 2024, prior to which the pitch needs to be approved by the FA. Approval is required in April 2024, with an FA inspection likely in March 2024, with the summer then allowing the pitch to bed in and grow ahead of the playing season.
A planning application has been submitted to Cornwall Council for both this main pitch and the community pitch.