Town have had planning permission for the redevelopment of the Playford Road training ground approved.

The Blues submitted the application in November for the rebuild, which is set to cost around £30 million with work expected to take 14 months.

“Developing our training facilities is something we have spoken about since day one at the club,” chairman and CEO Mark Ashton told the club site.

“To continue the club’s progress we need to attract, retain and develop elite players. We need first-class facilities to do that. 

“With development of the training ground being a key pillar of progression for the football club, this substantial investment will enhance our facilities and environment for our first-team, academy and women’s players, and will be key to the delivery of category one status for our academy. 

“Having worked with both internal and external stakeholders, we are delighted to have these works approved and we are grateful for everyone’s support. We will look to break ground as quickly as possible now.”
 
The redevelopment, which only includes the Playford Road side of the 13.5 hectare site not Bent Lane, will include a new first-team building, refurbishment of the existing building currently used by the senior side, academy and women’s teams and a new groundskeeper building.

The most significant aspect of the development is the new, state of the art training building for the first team, which will be located in the north-western corner of the site where the grounds maintenance compound is currently situated next to the pitch where U21s and U18s matches were played up to recent seasons.

The new first team building will be around 3,700m2 in total across two floors, designed to maximise views over the first-team training pitches, including outside terrace space adjacent to the dining facilities.

The facilities within the new building will include:

• Gym, pool hall (with hot and cold plunge pools, sauna, steam room and cryotherapy), treatment rooms.
• Press rooms, tactics and analysis presentation rooms.
• Kitchen, servery and dining spaces.
• Office and meeting space for managers, coaches, performance team and recruitment/analysis.
• Supporting functions such as ancillary changing and sanitary facilities, including laundry etc.

There will also be minor extensions and refurbishments to the existing main building, which was originally built for the academy but has gradually been taken over by the first team over the years.

The plans are designed to be future-proofed to allow for possible expansion at a later date.

Photo: ITFC

Bert added 17:36 - Mar 14 One of the many benefits of our promotion and the investment from our owners. The latter will have benefited from our earlier than expected promotion to the PL . Remaining in the Championship would not have delivered this. If we are relegated we retain the investment in real assets. Norwich have nothing like this.
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victorysquad added 18:48 - Mar 14 Lets get the foundations in ASAP, we can keep hold of McKenna and get him to stay for 5 more years, and then, we will be in the same position as Villa. He is happy here, his family are happy, if we don't stay up this year, we will bounce back with a very talented group of youngsters, and this year, whatever the outcome will have given us a huge amount of knowledge.

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Edmundo added 19:16 - Mar 14 Brilliant news. The foundations really are being laid - literally and figuratively - for Town to be a top 20 side for the next few decades (after at least 2 decades, probably more if we're being honest, of little to no investment beyond a couple of new stands). Forget this season for now, and even forget the millions spent on new players, that is mere window dressing compared to this and getting the youth/young senior player production line moving again like the really good old days. COYB

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Flight_of_Shefki added 06:55 - Mar 15 THIS is exactly why the thought of only being here in the PL for this season doesn't bother me too much. We have soo much good going for the club right now - be it investments, quality staff, infrastructure at PR and now of course the first class training facilities. We are going places - it may not be immediately, but just think back 3 or 4 years ago. Really, we're flying.

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