New £20m stadium for Millers will 'help revive' local economy

Members of Rotherham Council are set to refer outline plans for the club's new 12,000-capacity ground at the old Guest and Chrimes foundry site in Don Street to the Secretary of State, who can then grant planning permission.

If the Secretary of State decides not to intervene then councillors have been advised to grant planning permission themselves, meaning that detailed plans for the ground – which will cost between 20m and 25m to build – can then be drawn up.

Tony Stewart, chairman of Rotherham United, said the club was looking forward to bringing football back to the "heart of Rotherham."

He said: "This stadium will not only be an iconic landmark for the town, it will also deliver a community hub offering a range of services and facilities.

"This will not be just about Saturday football, it'll be a seven-days-a-week stadium offering job creation and enterprise opportunities. You can't underestimate the economic impact this stadium will have on Rotherham.

"I'm determined to make Rotherham United Football Club a club everyone in Rotherham can be proud of."

The League Two club left their Millmoor home of 101 years in the summer of 2008, after failing to agree rent terms with ground owner Ken Booth, and have since been playing at Don Valley Stadium.

If planning permission is granted, Rotherham will have to move into the new ground by the time the 2012/13 football season starts in order to comply with the deadline imposed by the Football League, which tied the Millers to a return to their home town within four years of their departure.

Although the stadium will initially only hold 12,000 people, a further 4,000 seats could be added to the capacity should the club progress upwards through the divisions. The new stadium will also create 10 permanent jobs and up to 200 temporary staff will be employed each match day,

In the report set to go before today's planning committee meeting, town planners say that crowds at home games will bring in between 375,000 and 623,000 of spending in Rotherham each year.

Concerns about the new ground have come from organisations including Her Majesty's Court Service, which says football fans going to and from the railway station could create problems for the nearby magistrates' court and police station, and English Heritage, which says it has "serious concerns" about the long-term future of the Grade Two-listed Guest and Chrimes building.

Town planners, however, say that the new stadium would improve the setting of the listed building as the new "commercial and recreational landscape" will be "far more aesthetically attractive than the landscape it had as part of its working life."

Recommending that the stadium is given the go-ahead, the planners add: "The proposal would provide significant community benefits, as well as immediate benefits to the protection of the listed building. The site is an important brownfield regeneration site close to the town centre and its redevelopment necessitates flood mitigation measures."

Rotherham Council's business and retail investment manager, Tim O'Connell, said: "It will be a major step forward if the plans get supported by members for the football club's new stadium.

"The development offers significant regeneration benefits for that area of town, where already work has started on the council's civic offices. It would also mean good news for our businesses.

"The Millers have, in the past, recorded over 7,500 people attending a game at their old stadium. With a new stadium this number of people has potential to increase, bringing huge benefits to the economy."