Thomas pledges to prioritise quality over speed when East Stand work restarts

Kelvin Thomas has pledged to prioritise quality over speed when work finally restarts on the East Stand.

The Northampton chairman remains reluctant to put a timeframe on when work might restart but he expects to be able to provide more information in the New Year.

The club have already held tentative discussions with contractors but they will wait until their agreement with West Northamptonshire Council is ratified next month, which should be a formality, before opening formal talks.

Thomas said: “We can only go on what the situation is at the time and we will look at it and, like anything else, we will try and do it as effectively and efficiently as we can.

“But we want it to be finished to a good standard, that’s the most important thing. We’re not going to rush it and put up a stand just because it’s cheaper, that wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.

“I’m not sure there will be diamond-studded walls or anything like that, but it will definitely be of a standard that fans will be excited about.

“We would love to give a date – next pre-season or next Christmas – for opening up the stand, but that’s not the way we operate so we won’t put any dates on it, and first of all we need to get through the process with the council in December.”

Funding for the work will be provided by the owners, but the impact of COVID may have affected the original budget.

“We have always been working on the £3million range but that might have gone up depending on material,” Thomas added.

“Times are tough right now in terms of construction and that’s has been a concern as we move past COVID.

“Getting material is very tough at the moment and that’s a shared problem around the world but we want to get going as quickly as we can.

“Information from a few years ago was that the build process would take between four and six months and that’s just the build, not getting people on site, but that may have changed due to COVID.

“The commitment from us is that we want to build it as soon as we can.”