Last week two of the major obstacles preventing a restart on Minchery Farm were removed. Firstly Cheshire developer Nick Pentith withdrew his judicial review into the granting of planning permission for the multiplex cinema at Minchery Farm, a supposedly necessary development to finance the completion of the stadium (which is going to cost around ?10 million more to complete). Secondly the Court of Appeal upheld the original decision to overrule Morrells of Oxford’s injunction into preventing work proceeding due to a 1962 covenant on the Blackbird pub in nearby Blackbird Leys.

Although it remains a distant possibility that Morrells might yet take their appeal to the House of Lords, this effectively just leaves two further impediments before builders can go back on site. One of these is the caution imposed on the site by Les Wells, who is claiming that he has a right of way going through the stadium. The other is the final settlement between the City Council and Thames Water for the Council’s breaking of a restrictive covenant on the site which limited any development there to non-commercial leisure activities.

The caution in itself is not a threat to the stadium, as Firoz Kassam has already expressed his intention to proceed despite it, believing that it has no basis in law. Whilst this displays admirable determination on Kassam’s part, one has to question why it has taken the City Council’s legal department so long to challenge this claim, which has sat in the Land Registry in Gloucester for many months. The latest word from the Council is that it is unlikely to be able to bring this case to court before the end of September, which displays astonishing ineptitude for a Local Authority which has had both the opportunity and the incentive to have acted on this long ago. Indeed, Council Officers had repeatedly informed both Kassam and FOUL that papers were to be served imminently.

The Thames Water issue has much more serious implications for the success of the stadium development. Oxford City Council has already lost its legal challenge to the covenant, and agreed to split the negotiated compensation of ?1,000,000 with United. The club has agreed to pay its ?500,000 but the City Council, it transpires, has sought leave to appeal and has yet to fork out its half million. If the Council does appeal this could take months before an appeal is heard and will almost certainly be challenged by Thames Water should the City Council win, taking it to the House of Lords and meaning even more delay. Apparently the Liberal Democrats see this case as something of a cause celebre for Local Authorities who want to have a legal right to remove covenants which affect the Councils which imposed them. Neither Labour nor the Green Party support this stance and so it is to be hoped that their combined weight will force the Lib-Dems to rethink their attitude.

We are closer to getting builders back on site now than we have been in the three and a half years since they walked off. Kassam has already initiated discussions with Barr Construction to agree when they should move onto the site. If they’re not there by the end of September there’s a real possibility that the new stadium won’t be ready for the start of the next season, which could have serious implications for United, as it’s unlikely that the Football Licensing Authority will be so accommodating as they have been the last two seasons in letting the club stay at the Manor. In order to facilitate this it’s imperative that Oxford City Council pulls its finger out, pays Thames Water and issues the papers to bring the Les Wells case to a close. It’s time that they put their rhetoric of support for United and Minchery Farm into physical action, and not use the football club as a part of their obscure legal experimentation.