AN ambitious plan by Wellington Football Club to develop a new ground has been hit by rising costs - and is currently 'on hold.'

The club want to move their senior sides from the Playing Field to a new facility at the entrance to the Longforth Farm housing estate.

The club's vice-chairman Graham Aspin said: "We're still very interested in the idea. However, the cost of building materials has soared. It will cost much more than we originally estimated. You might say the project has stalled."

Wellington currently play their senior matches on the council-owned ground at the Playing Field and share this with the local cricket club.

This poses a problem, particularly for the football club, who have to play early and late season games away from home, although this year the cricket club kindly allowed them to play on it when they, themselves, should have been preparing and playing on it.

Wellington AFC's first team are sometimes faced with playing about ten of their opening games of the season away from home - which is not good news and disadvantages them so early on in a season.

The answer would be to have a ground of their own and this costs money - and a lot of it. It had been estimated some time ago that it would cost £500,000. But the figure would be much higher today with rising prices.

One idea was to move to a ground on the other side of the A38 but this never materialised.

Back in the 80s the club considered buying ground at Rockwell Green but decided against it because the Playing Field was in a better place.