There has been a lot of media coverage over the last few months about the potential re-building of St James Park in Leazes Park. Save Newcastle Wildlife presented a petition to the June Council meeting asking for a referendum before any agreement is made.

Newcastle City Council, in its comments to the media and in the response given to the petition, has said that there is no current planning application and that all applications are subject to public consultation.

There would be two things, however required for the use of Leazes Park. The first is that the club would have to acquire the land and the second is that they would have to get planning permission. I have repeatedly asked the council to clarify who owns the land and the process that would be needed to dispose of it. I have now had an answer from Coun Dan Greenhough, Cabinet Member for Economy, Jobs and Skills:

What is the legal status of Leazes Park (E.g. Is it owned by Newcastle City Council? Or by the City of Newcastle upon Tyne? Is there any legal distinction between the two? Are there any covenants or restrictions on the land?).

The site is held by The Council of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. This is typically the designation given to land/buildings owned by Newcastle City Council.  A very small part of the site (south-west corner) is covered by a restriction in relation to any disposal meeting the requirements of the Localism Act but there are no restrictive covenants stated for the wider site. There are a number of deeds/easements in place with various utilities companies for cables and pipes.

What process would have to be followed for the disposal of a city asset? 

There are predominantly two. The first would be when a site/building is declared surplus to Council requirements. In this scenario we would typically market the property for sale and invite bids. The bids would be assessed and we would typically recommend the highest bid that can be reasonably expected to achieve planning permission. We would engage with Planning colleagues early to provide a steer on the bids and then follow the usual consultation process with internal departments (e.g. Legal Services, Finance & Net Zero team) as well as consultation with ward councillors and members. The alternative disposal process would be a direct disposal to a Special Purchaser. Examples include someone who already has a legal interest in the site (e.g. a long lease already in place and seeking to acquire the freehold) or someone who has land holdings adjacent and requires our site for wider site assembly and development. In this scenario we would follow the same consultation as the first but would look to verify best value typically through a third party valuation.

I had also asked for details of any discussions that have been had with NUFC or its representatives about their potential use of Leazes Park and any other public land in Newcastle. I have not yet had an answer to that. I will share it on this page when I do.

I am personally opposed to any loss of green space in the city centre and think that Leazes Park, the first people’s park, should be retained.

I also have huge concerns about the city doing business with Saudi Arabia, an undemocratic state with an appalling human rights record. (Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund owns 85% of the club.) As a minimum, Newcastle City Council should be speaking out in support of the human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, and making clear that Newcastle will not be used to launder Saudi Arabia’s reputation. If they want a better reputation, then they need to behave better.

As a ward councillor, however, my main role is to make sure that people’s voices are heard. I would be pushing for a full public consultation on the sale of any public land to the club and independent verification of the value of any deal to the city.

05.08.25

I received a response from Coun Greenhough on September 9

“As I said in the response to the petition, Newcastle United is a key stakeholder in the city, obviously as a key stakeholder, officers and the Club are in frequently dialogue on a range of issues on a regular basis.

However, we have received no planning application from the club to develop land at Leazes Park or anywhere else in the city for a new stadium or a redevelopment of St James’ Park.

As with any application, if a planning application is submitted to the Local Planning Authority we will assess this through the statutory process. All applicants are encouraged to undertake public engagement prior to submitting a planning application and the LPA will consult in accordance with our policies and legislation.

A key consideration of any planning application is to consider the environmental impacts of their proposal.  Newcastle United would be treated no differently to anyone else in this respect.

Whenever a potential applicant wishes to discuss to ideas and proposals, we would encourage them to engage with us as the Local Planning Authority, and we will happily advise about the planning processes that are in place to protect our communities, our wildlife and our environment.”

This did not answer my question, which was about ownership, so I decided to send in a Freedom of Information request.

The response I received was:

We estimate it would take 1056 hours to identify, extract and then provide the information that you have requested. This is a result of an email search made by the Council’s ICT department based on the criteria you have provided which found 31,680 emails that could potentially be in the scope of your request. Each email would take a minimum of 2 minutes to determine whether or not it is actually in scope of the request, then to retrieve and extract the information where required.

Therefore, we will not continue with this request in compliance with Section 12(1). (This allows organisations to refuse requests that would cost them more than £450 to reply to.)

This was for emails with the Search Terms/Key Words

“Newcastle United Football Club”  AND  “Leazes Park”  AND EITHER “Legal Agreement” OR “Leasehold” OR “Sale”

Dates

Between 01/01/18 and 20/09/25.

I asked a question at Council on November in a further attempt to get answers, without success. You can read about it here