A DESIGNATED media and police centre is to be built at Alloa Athletic Football Club, after planning proposals were approved.

Clackmannanshire Council granted permission to the club to develop the joint media and police centre for the back left corner of Recreation Park.

This ties in with the approval of a fourth enclosure, planned to be built at the ‘railway end’ of the ground, which is currently undeveloped.

However, both projects are dependant on the relocation of a telecommunication mast which is currently situated on the site where the proposed media centre would be constructed.

The proposals state: “Existing mast to be removed by others and electrical supply. A new facility with good viewing capabilities of the grounds.

“Proposed new police and media centre located to the high point of the site, located on the north west end of the grounds accessed from the west stand.”

READ MORE: Fourth enclosure approved for Alloa Athletic

Currently, media representatives sit in the back row of the west main stand, without desks or charging stations.

A police centre is also located within the main stand, but is usually unused during matchdays.

A designated media and police centre is one of the requirements for a club looking to achieve SPFL silver licence status for their ground.

Alloa currently holds a bronze licence with Alex Brown, operations manager for the club, explaining to the Advertiser that the club plan to move forward with obtaining silver status.

He said: “The club has a long-term development plan and we’re trying to move towards silver status.

“We want to get everything in place to move towards silver status for the ground, we’re currently bronze, and that’s part of this program.

“Silver status has quite well-defined criteria for what is to be in place and one of these things is a media centre with proper desks, cover and good viewing, as well as a police control area.

“The current control room is currently a metre to a metre and a half squared, it’s very small and the press are situated in the back of the stand among the crowd.

“We need to move it forward a bit and we need to move things forward.”

The re-siting of the telecommunications mast would have to be carried out before the media and police centre could begin construction.

Mr Brown confirmed that negotiations are ongoing with the owners of the mast about relocating to a different site to allow the club to commence development of the railway end.

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He added: “We fully intend to develop that end of the ground but the mast is severely restricting our opportunity to do that.

“We’re in discussion with the people who have the mast to say we would like to come to a possible re-siting arrangement to allow us to develop that end of the ground.

“Once we get that solidified, we would be going ahead with the project. It is our full and clear intention to build.”