AMBITIOUS plans to relocate Kendal Rugby Club to a purpose-built edge of town stadium are to be resurrected by developers.

A Government planning inspector last week rejected a scheme to transform the club’s Shap Road ground into a supermarket and non-food retail units.

However, Cheshire-based developers Morbaine - who have a deal with the rugby club to build a new stadium on land adjacent to Oxenholme Road in exchange for the current ground - say they will resubmit another application as early as next week.

“I think we failed on what I would call a highway technicality,” said Alex Brodie, director of Morbaine. “While the application decision was a refusal - in reviewing it in detail it has got many positives for the rugby club. We feel we have only got technical details on highways to address.”

Mr Brodie said he has a highways consultant working on finding a solution to the problem.

Planning Inspector George Baird said in his report that the development would create an additional 180 vehicles an hour in both directions at the Station Road junction at Longpool.

Rugby club chairman Stephen Green said it could face “huge financial pressure” if it is not able to move to the new site.

“The rejection has nothing to do with retail development, it is to do with traffic management in the town, which has been a problem for many years,” he said.

Dr Green said the club’s directors had not got a firm contingency plan in place but said the club was likely to struggle financially if the move does not happen.

“I think there is a danger that we would come under huge financial pressure if this move doesn’t go ahead,” he said. “But we have not got to the stage where we are thinking what next.”

Graham Vincent, Economic Prosperity portfolio holder for South Lakeland District Council, said he was not sure that the Shap Road site was the best place for a new supermarket in Kendal.

“I’m sorry that the rugby club’s current plans to relocate are in abeyance,” he said. “I’m not sure that the out of town site is in the best interests of the economy of Kendal.”

Ken Leech, who opposed the planning application to build a stadium on Strawberry Fields off Oxenholme Road on behalf of residents of Howe Bank Close, said: “I’m glad that the inspector has turned it down but I don’t see it as the end of the matter. They might get permission to build something else on their land.”

Traffic planners at Cumbria County Council’s highways department said they would work with the developers to minimise adverse traffic affects.

A Cumbria County Council spokesman said: “We wouldn’t make alterations to traffic flows on the basis of an unsuccessful application.

“If a revised scheme is submitted however, we would work with the applicant at the pre-application stage to look at how the impact on traffic of a potential development could be minimised.”