Stadium delay could be the end for Truro City warns chairman

TRURO CITY chairman Peter Masters has warned the club will fold if building on their new stadium does not begin soon.

The White Tigers were given permission back in July to build a new ground on the outskirts of the city but complications have now appeared.

The plan is still awaiting approval from the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Planning Casework Unit. Truro originally hoped to move into their new ground at Silver Bow in 2016.

They have sold their Treyew Road home with a retail park set to be built on the site and Masters believes discussions around rugby union side Cornish Pirates’ new Stadium for Cornwall are delaying Truro’s plans.

“Our plans for a move to Silver Bow have been caught up in a “game of poker”, which has been with the Secretary of State awaiting a decision for the past three months,” Masters said.

“The very future of the TCFC playing football in the National League rests on a knife edge and is entirely dependent on the grant of planning consent at Treyew Road, which in turn will enable Helical to provide the necessary funding to enable a move to Silver Bow, where the freehold will be given to the club which will provide a fully costed and funded foundation for the club to develop as planned.

“We have all invested large amounts of time and money on this project which has received the full backing of Cornwall Council but is now being delayed by Government bureaucracy, fuelled by hype and circumspection surrounding the Stadium for Cornwall.

“Any further delays will mean that the TCFC will have no home, will lose its place in the league and will fold. Surely the politicians do not want this fate resting on their shoulders and be responsible for the demise of 126 years of football being played in Truro.”