Chelsea have made the next step in securing permission to build a new indoor training facility for their base at Cobham. The Blues have plans to construct a new building in order to meet the Premier League's standards for their youth academy (this is to do with the tier system for the new Elite Player Performance plan, which claims 'quality of facilities' as one of the ten factors in rating an academy), but there was some question as to whether the application would be shut down by whatever the heck an 'Elmbridge Borough Council' is.
The reason? Chelsea wanted to build on a green belt, land that's usually set aside to remain undeveloped. Although some councilors are upset about this -- quotes include "Sport is very nice and we all revelled in the Olympic Games but there are other issues that are much more important that we have turned down," from Councillor Dorothy Mitchell and "We seem to get more and more applications from people like this and they think they can go ahead and do it. I think this is wrong. I don't thing it is always right. I’m sure there is another area," from Cllr Janet Turner, the latter of whom seems woefully uninformed and needlessly hostile (You went on the record saying 'people like this'? Are you serious?) -- the Blues were allowed to proceed in a general meeting and the application will now go up the chain of local bureaucracy.
Hurray.