In the summer of 2017, Preston North End sought to gain planning approval for ‘state of the art’ training facilities in our continued quest to bring Premier League football to the city of Preston.

Our planning submission was on a two-part basis, one for the training ground and the second for housing approval on adjacent land at Ingol, Preston.

In all of our pre planning discussions it was made clear that the financing of the training ground could only be based on the delivery of the profit from the whole of the housing development. This remains the case.

Some three years later we have still not received any substantive return from the housing planning and due to the detail of the consent we are unlikely to do so for a number of years.

Our strategic objective for the site at Ingol is unchanged, however, the short term need to give our players the right facilities has led us to consider an interim solution that is cost effective, provides our players with enhanced facilities from those currently provided and can in the future be passed on to our senior Academy team who are currently located at UCLAN. Even following this move the U8s to U16s teams will continue to benefit from the UCLAN facilities.

Following on from the above, we will have submitted a planning application to enhance our existing first team training facilities at Springfields. This solution is an affordable bridging solution in advance of maximising the return on the housing development at Ingol and has the added benefit of upgrading our U18 academy facilities as and when our first team relocate.

The purpose of the press release is to keep our supporters updated and to allow those who worked so hard to support us in the original application at Ingol to have a context and understanding of this new application.