THE first stage of a complicated planning process starts with the developer submitting a formal application to Swindon Council on behalf of the football club.

This will join a long list of applications in the pipeline, but will eventually be debated by planners who have the power to approve, reject or defer the scheme.

But any application is complicated by the fact, for example, Swindon Council owns the County Ground and Shaw Tip and will be the authority that ultimately determines whether the project sinks or swims.

The scenario mirrors the Front Garden development, an application to build 4,500 houses on land sandwiched between Old Town and the M4, which was submitted by Bryant Homes and approved in January this year.

Swindon Council again owned the lions share of the land, but it was still the authority that decided the application went ahead.

Unlike other new football stadia, the apparent favoured site at Shaw Tip is on prime brownfield land and not a greenfield site (like the Front Garden) areas the Government is keen to see developed.

However, the land forms part of the Great Western Community Forest a massive area planted with thousands of new trees, which could prove a stumbling block.

The application could even be decided by a public inquiry.