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Liverpool’s Mayor says Everton Football Club will have a new stadium “within three years”.

The comments come as it was revealed the city council and Everton FC have scrapped proposals to build a new home for the Blues on Walton Hall Park .

Green space campaigners have today been celebrating the decision wich they now hope will see Walton Hall Park protected from development.

The council had faced determined opposition to the development by groups seeking to protect green spaces from development.

Now the city council and Everton have said they are looking at two new sites in the city to build Everton’s new ground.

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Mayor Anderson said on BBC Radio Merseyside: “I’m confident the new stadium will be up and running in three years time.

“I think there is a real acceptance by them and I’m pretty confident that within three years there will be a new stadium for Everton football club in Liverpool.”

The club and council had hoped a £300m scheme using part of the park in north Liverpool would see 1,000 new homes and 30,000 square metres of leisure, retail and restaurant space, plus the new stadium.

But a statement released today (Monday May 16) said due to the economic climate the Walton Hall Park plans would not longer go ahead.

They said: “The proposed scheme at Walton Hall Park was always an ambitious one. It was a regeneration scheme that relied heavily on retail investment into the site.

“Most of the current investment into retail is focused on city centres and larger district centres and not on out-of-town developments like this would have been.”

The Mayor added: “Most people will be aware that I did give a commitment to Everton to support a potential scheme at Walton Hall Park with the aim of regenerating the area and creating new jobs.

“However, through the work that the club and the council have done, we have concluded that effectively building a new village in North Liverpool with lots of retail space is a step too far in this current economic climate.