As many of you will be aware our progress up the leagues is going a little faster than was originally planned.  This combined with the delay in building the new ground which we now plan to have open by February 2016 has led to speculation in certain quarters that our current ground is not up to Conference standards.

In simple terms this is true and if we did nothing we could not go up.  The Conference has very high standards and rightly so.

The Directors understand this and based on our current league position have decided to invest the money necessary to meet the Conference grading requirements at our current ground.

There are three main areas that we have to upgrade.  Firstly the flood lights LUX reading which must be a minimum 180.  This was done some weeks ago and the information submitted to the league.

Secondly we need to have 500 covered seats.  At present we have 283 so we have ordered a new 250 seated stand which will be installed in late March and situated at the south end of the ground behind the goal.

Finally we have to have a ground capacity of 4,000 and this will require the installation of new safety barriers in and around the ground and in particular upgrading the perimeter fencing, again this is all in hand.

The total cost of all the new upgrade will be over £75,000 which sounds a lot of money for something we won’t need in 12 month’s time.  However, you can’t halt progress and if Dave and Colin keep up the good work on the pitch we want to ensure we don’t fail off it.