Last night, Cherwell District Council gave Oxford United an early birthday present. The CDC voted 14-1 (with three notable abstentions) to grant the club planning permission for its proposed 16,000-capacity stadium at the Triangle: a haggard piece of land between north Oxford and Kidlington currently used to grow willow for fencing.

While this is the right result, especially after the planning officers recommended voting in favour last week, there was still a lot of nervousness around, with many of the opening remarks from various councillors expressing concerns about aspects of the development. However, when it came to putting their thoughts into actions, it was clear that most of the people who mattered felt that the merits of the stadium outweighed any harm that might be done to the Green Belt land on which it will sit, and voted accordingly.

The campaign against the stadium, led by the ‘cautiously neutral’ Green Party councillor Ian Middleton and the ad hoc inept pressure group Friends of Stratfield Brake (the original proposal for the stadium was for it to be sited on Stratfield Brake, a recreation ground on the other side of Frieze Way, until Oxfordshire County Council accepted Kidlington Parish Council’s (KPC) objections and offered the club the opportunity to rent the much smaller site of the Triangle at a favourable rate), clearly didn’t grasp the enormity of the development. Their arguments hinged on an already disproven claim that the treeline on the brake constituted Ancient Woodland (a legal definition requiring the woods to have been there continuously since 1600 AD).

Was this a flawed tactic or a desperate last throw of the dice? All their previous arguments had been refuted one by one by the planning experts working for the club and while some of their points were sensible, and taken on board by the club in its application, they seemed unable to accept that the development would be a net benefit for their constituents. They were opposed to the stadium for opposition’s sake, not because they wanted what was truly the best outcome for all.

It took the combined councillors of CDC four hours to see sense and to accept the planning officers’ recommendations. The planning process in this country contains many flaws – not least of which is the weight accorded to pressure groups that have an axe to grind rather than well-thought out arguments and material planning objections. However, sometimes the system does provide oases of sanity in a mad world, and this was one of those occasions.

The size of the majority in favour of granting planning permission was a clear demonstration of the professional and comprehensive application that the club’s consultants had prepared, such that while there are still questions to be answered, and Section 106 agreements to be hammered out and agreed, there were no real flaws in the documents. The one councillor who voted against the application was an Independent Green from Kidlington, while the abstainers were two Green Party councillors from KPC, including the aforementioned Middleton’s wife, Fiona Mawson, and a Lib Dem councillor, also from KPC (thanks to Dillon on Yellows Forum for pointing out who they represented). For them, abstaining was probably an astute political move, especially as a Labour councillor had called for a ‘named vote’ so that everyone could see who voted which way.

A notable victory for Oxford United – better than anything they have or will achieve on the pitch – but there is a huge caveat. The new stadium won’t just suddenly appear two years hence. Oxford’s owners have deep pockets, but they will not want to be responsible for funding a stadium that is likely to cost upward of £180 million. Even if they are prepared to pay 50 per cent of the cost, that leaves a huge sum to found from elsewhere. Can this be achieved through corporate sponsorships and other means?

Once the Secretary of State (Angela Raynor) rubber stamps the council’s decision, and any possible threat of a Judicial Review is removed, there will still be a gap before the first sod of earth is dug. And Sod’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is no time for complacency, and for the club there is still a lot of hard work to be done before we can even dream of kicking off in 2028 at the Triangle, duh.