Opposing sides clashed over the effect of the Kirkby development. Richard Down reports

The relationship between Everton FC and Liverpool City Council appears to be increasingly strained, as David Bartlett reports

“IT DOES now seem as if certain individuals and the council are determined to ruin Everton Football Club”.

Those shocking words were used by a source close to the football club, in yesterday’s Daily Post, after it lost a public inquiry to build homes on its former training ground.

They are sure to send reverberations around the local authority – but are they justified?

When news reached Goodison Park, on Tuesday, that the club had lost the inquiry to build 74 homes on Bellefield, in West Derby, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Liverpool council officers had originally recommended the housing scheme be approved but the elected members on the planning committee rejected it unanimously.

Everton’s acting chief executive Robert Elstone said: “The truly disappointing aspect of this is that the politicians who run this city went against the recommendations of the city council's own planning experts.

“In such circumstances, you have to ask why that is?”

In the view of the Everton FC hierarchy, it appeared to be the culmination of months of manoeuvring by Liverpool City Council to try to stop the club’s plans to move to Kirkby as part of a £400m development with Tesco.

The council wants the club to stay within the Liverpool city boundaries, particularly council leader and Everton season ticket holder Warren Bradley. But would the council leader want to “ruin” his beloved club? The answer must surely be no.

Everton believes that, only by moving to a new stadium in Kirkby can it safeguard the financial future of the club, whereas Cllr Bradley and the council clearly think otherwise.

“What are Everton fans getting? A glorified cow shed built in a small town outside Liverpool,” Cllr Bradley famously said last year.

“The problem is Everton at the moment does not have the money itself to invest in a new quality stadium. That is why the club should realise it is time for new partners to move in.”

At an extraordinary general meeting last year, club chairman Bill Kenwright reiterated his desire to sell Everton, although some fans have become increasingly disconcerted that he has not yet found a new owner to his liking.

The club agrees with Cllr Bradley that the main issue here is affordability. The Kirkby model, which includes a large retail element, offers the club the chance for a new stadium for a contribution of only £78m.

The cost of building a new ground will be much more than that, but the cross- subsidy provided by shopping means Everton gets a new stadium that it might not otherwise be able to afford.

In defence of the allegation the city has done nothing to help, the council points to a number of sites it has offered the club to build a new stadium.

But, in the club’s view, none of the options were affordable.

There are also those at Goodison who perceive that a red carpet has been laid out for their rivals Liverpool to build a new ground on Stanley Park – the famous city landmark that divides the two great clubs.

In developing the package to fund its £78m contribution, Everton believed it would be able to sell Bellefield for up to £10m.

Yesterday’s decision put paid to that, at least in the short term.

The club say it will find the money from elsewhere, but was furious.

Labour opposition leader Joe Anderson believes the decision was symptomatic of the “breakdown in trust” between the club and the council. Had there been more dialogue, Cllr Anderson believes Everton FC would have achieved planning permission. The club is also sore at the council’s formal objection to the Destination Kirkby scheme – currently at public inquiry – seeing it as another example of its intent to scupper its move away.

The council claims it only objected because of the huge retail element that goes with the stadium.

And Liverpool was certainly not the only council to object, with Sefton, St Helens, and West Lancs also lodging objections on retail grounds, and they will not be suffering the possible loss of a Premier League club.

The relationship between Liverpool City Council and Everton FC is clearly at a very low ebb, but both could yet be forced into a reconciliation.

If the inquiry into Destination Kirkby were to reject the new stadium, Mr Elstone and Cllr Bradley may be back round the same table once again.