Decision to leave the EU will not affect Hatters' plans for a new ground at Power Court

Luton Town chief executive Gary Sweet doesn't believe that the decision to leave the European Union will have a negative impact on the club's plans to build a new stadium at Power Court.
Hatters chief executive Gary SweetHatters chief executive Gary Sweet
Hatters chief executive Gary Sweet

On Friday morning, it was revealed that voters had opted to end 41 years as part of the EU, and although that has led to fears over the UK’s economy, Sweet, who will submit a planning application for two sites, a 17,500 stadium at Power Court and also another scheme at Newlands Park on Thursday, wasn’t overly worried it will affect any move away from Kenilworth Road.

Speaking at the club’s new kit launch, he said: “We don’t believe it has any impact at all on the planning application, and the thing is, nobody really knows what impact that’s going to have.

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“Here we are and we’re still going to be buying Ikea furniture from Sweden and we’ll still be travelling on easyJet to foreign countries.

“I think there’s a lot of excited reaction from it and I’m not going to profess to being any economist at all in this but from our point of over a period of time to calm the stutter that we’re going to see in the markets will help us, in order to make sure that we get the right tenants in the offices and the retail outlets and to make sure we get the right investments coming in on those properties.

“Fortunately we don’t have to do that this month or this weekend, so we’ve got a little bit of time to do that as generally you don’t sign up on those agreements until your planning application has been approved anyway.

“We’ve started to have a lot of those conversations so we know the sorts of people that are interested.

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“There are businesses I noticed on the stock market whose share prices increased, so it’s not all doom and gloom for everyone out there and I’m just hoping that a few of the people that are intending to move in our site have had a positive day too.”

When the planning application is submitted later this week, Sweet is aware the work doesn’t stop as he awaits an outcome in around six months time.

He added: “Once it goes in we sort of turn a corner, it doesn’t stop there though, we carry on, and we work with the planning officers to make sure that everything is understood and we make sure that any of their queries or concerns are also considered.

“So it’s an ongoing continuous process and then hopefully we’ll know at the end of the year, the beginning of next and then it’s a completely different era for Luton Town Football Club.”

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