Start date announced for stadium construction

Work to build a sports ground that will be home to a town's football and rugby league teams will get under way in January, it has been announced.

The 5,000-capacity Cumberland Sports Village will replace Borough Park, which had been the long-standing home of Workington AFC, and will also play host to Workington Town RLFC.

Cumberland Council leader Mark Fryer described the project as the "number one priority" for the area.

More information will be available at the football team's game against Guiseley at their temporary home, the nearby Fibrus Community Stadium, on 15 August, followed by Town's men's and women's fixtures against Rochdale Hornets at the same ground the following day.

Plans for a new stadium were first announced several years ago, but were dropped by the now-defunct Allerdale Borough Council amid opposition.

Revised designs were then put forward and in April it was confirmed an extra £4.5m had been set aside by Cumbria Combined Authority to increase the capacity from 3,700.

Fryer said he believed the scheme was now making good progress having "gone on for far too long" and the Labour-led council was looking to make it a "top-class facility" with the tender process to find a contractor under way.

"I cannot express what I felt when I saw the CGI photographs of the project," he added.

"It's beyond what I thought we could recover when the previous project was knifed politically.

"The community pitch is the key to it and the use of the stadium."

He said both Town and the football team - nicknamed Reds - had "a significant part to play" in the success of the new stadium, but it was also a "community facility and people will see... that it's theirs and theirs for a long time".

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the main construction work was due to start next year with ground works beginning outside the bigger contract.

Demolition work at Borough Park began in May, shortly after the Reds played their final home game of last season.

They will play their upcoming home fixtures at Town's ground ahead of both sides moving into the new stadium.

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