Northampton Town: Why has Sixfields' East Stand taken so long to finish?

It is now 10 years since Northampton Town's home ground Sixfields hosted a professional match in front of a completed stadium.

The club's East Stand was at the heart of a scandal which saw £10.25m of taxpayers' money go missing. What happened and how long will it be before the Cobblers' home is fully operational once more?

Sixfields Stadium opened in west Northampton in 1994 with an all-seater capacity of 7,653. John Barnwell, the club's then manager, declared it would "kick off a new era".

Until then, the club had shared a ground with Northamptonshire County Cricket Club. The three-sided County Ground played host to the club's only top flight season in 1965-66.

Life at Sixfields started slowly, but the Cobblers went close to back-to-back play-off final wins - and a place in what is now the Championship - in 1998.

In 2003, businessman David Cardoza and his father Tony became the club's owners. After agreeing a 150-year lease of the stadium and surrounding land in 2004, they revealed plans to redevelop and expand Sixfields to a greater capacity, including executive boxes and improved facilities.

However, it was not until 2013 that the now defunct Northampton Borough Council signed off a deal to loan the club £10.25m to deliver the work - which would have also included a hotel and conference centre built.

On 3 May 2014, the Cobblers beat Oxford United 3-1 to avoid relegation to the National League in the final game of Sixfields' original configuration.

Work on the new East Stand started in earnest soon after the conclusion of the 2013-14 season and the club's owners originally said the stand would be reopened in time for the 2014-15 campaign.

But progress on the barely half-built stand stalled after a building contractors went unpaid.

The £10.25m sum loaned to the club became the subject of a police inquiry which is ongoing to this day.

With the millions missing, Northampton Town's players and staff went unpaid for weeks. A company set up by the Cardoza family to oversee the development was forced into liquidation in October 2015.

In November 2015, the club was sold to Kelvin Thomas and the Cobblers avoided a winding-up petition over an unpaid debt to HMRC, allowing focus to return to the pitch.

Before the end of the 2015-16 season - which saw Northampton win League Two under the management of Chris Wilder - seats were added back into the East Stand which raised Sixfields' capacity to 7,798. However, the stand has remained otherwise nothing more than a shell ever since.

A new deal between the club and West Northamptonshire Council - which replaced Northampton Borough Council - was agreed in 2021.

It would see the council sell the land for £890,000 to County Developments Northampton Ltd (CDNL), which is a firm owned by the club. It would be developed for warehousing.

There were further delays because of a judicial review over the deal, but the contract was signed last month.

Work is now back under way on the long-awaited stand with the Cobblers targeting its completion by the first quarter of 2025.

After the original contractor for the work in 2014 - Buckingham Group - collapsed last year, the club appointed Nuneaton-based GRS Group to continue the project.

The finished work should increase the capacity to more than 8,200 and give the club its first pitch-facing hospitality with executive boxes.

More parking spaces, new dining areas, and the return of the accessible viewing platform for supporters who use wheelchairs, have also been included., external

The new East Stand will see the installation of a link road around the stadium, and a concourse area with kiosks and screens.

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