If you don’t live near Moredon you might be unfamiliar with the area’s local recreation ground, but you may well have driven past it.

Located next door to Nova Hreod Academy and facing on to Akers Way, its playing fields are well used by local sports clubs, while the former nine-hole pitch and putt course and associated parkland has been a popular haven for those living nearby who fancy a stroll as well as local dog walkers.

The recreation ground is owned by the Council and, for the last couple of years, we have been working on plans to make even better use of the land for the benefit of local residents.

In recent times the site has been used for national cyclo-cross races and this has served as something of an inspiration for a scheme approved by the Council’s Cabinet in March.

Under the plans, more than £3.6m of investment would be ploughed in to the recreation ground to provide a top class closed road cycling track, a BMX track, a BMX pump track, Cyclo-cross, a brand new 3G pitch and enhanced football, croquet and cricket provision. It will also provide new changing rooms and a new sports pavilion.

This would transform the recreation ground into a sporting hub with new facilities to match. But as with many developments of this type, the Council cannot deliver them in isolation, which is why we have gained support from other sporting bodies.

British Cycling, the Football Foundation and Sport England have offered grant funding to offset the cost of the new changing rooms and pavilion, proposed cycling road circuit and 3G artificial pitch, subject to planning, and we hope to submit a planning application by the end of this year.

To help contribute to the Council’s investment in the scheme, it is our intention that a secluded development of high quality homes will be built on Council-owned land close to the entrance of the sports hub. The layout will be designed to encourage walking and cycling, with quality of place at its heart.

A public consultation on the development brief that will inform the housing element of the scheme was approved by the Planning Committee on Tuesday and it is really important that we receive as much feedback as possible. We will publicise details of how you can take part in the consultation in due course.

There has already been really good engagement on the scheme from the local community and we want that to continue for this hugely exciting development.

We still have work to do to transform this much-loved public open space into a fantastic sporting facility, but I am delighted the wheels are now well and truly moving.