Thomas 'excited' by recent progress over East Stand

Cobblers chairman Kelvin Thomas has given an update regarding the club's discussions with various local authorities over the development of the East Stand at the PTS Academy Stadium.

The long-running saga may have taken a back seat for many this year given the coronavirus pandemic but Thomas says work has been going on behind the scenes.

"It definitely hasn't taken a back seat for us and we feel we've made progress," he said. "It's changed a bit because we're no longer speaking to NBC as they will cease to exist as an authority from April.

"There's a new unitary authority called West Northants which will have a new leader and a new chief exec so we have notified NBC that we're going to move forward with West Northants in terms of the negotiations and the conversations and we'll pick those up.

"I have a call with the new CEO between Christmas and the New year to continue those discussions. We've already had some primary conversations and I must say I have been very impressed by the professionalism shown by the new authority.

"They've got back to us and we've had meetings pretty quickly and what we've achieved in the last six weeks has been pretty good so we're a bit more excited now about getting something sorted in a relatively short period of time.

"There's still complications but they've picked it up very quickly and the new CEO has picked up the main parts of it so we'll see how this next call goes and hopefully in the New Year that will continue to progress well."