By Martin Perry, Stadium Project Manager

Good news! It's been a big week on the road to Falmer. Firstly, Brighton & Hove City Council have approved the planning application for the widening of the Stanmer Park access road.

This is a vital part of the SEEDA funded infrastructure work and as revealed on these very pages, the council have also appointed designers for this work.

Amey, who are based in Lewes are now working hard to ensure that work on this part of the stadium project commences as scheduled in April next year.

The whole of these works are expected to take a year and so the new flyovers road junctions and access road into the University of Sussex is scheduled for completion mid 2010.

That leaves two more planning applications directly related to the stadium, our 'stadium changes and chalk re-profiling application' - the one we call the 'housekeeping application' because it sweeps up all the legislation changes that have taken place since we originally designed the stadium, is almost ready for submission and the planning office are now checking it prior to registration.

This will be followed by a small application for some replacement car parking spaces for the University of Brighton. Once we have the reference numbers of these applications we will be asking fans to write in support of them.

However even better news is that the tenders are now back from contractors bidding for the work and we have narrowed the contest down to just two of them.

Both are very experienced in stadium building in this country and we are now going into an intensive period of negotiation with both of them to decide finally who will build our new stadium.

Unlike the Olympics there is only one medal position and we are hoping to be in a position to announce who the winner is by the end of September.

The contractor is then going to have a very busy time because he will have to mobilise themselves ready for a start on the Village Way widening works in December. Exciting times ahead...

Previous columns
Week Five: Still on Target
Week Four: Road to Falmer!
Week Three: Richard Hebberd
Week Two: City College & Albion
Week One: Planning, funding & legal update