MEMBERS of Kent County Cricket Club are preparing to vote on plans which could seal the future of the St Lawrence cricket ground.

At a special general meeting tonight, they will face a straight "yes or no" vote whether to authorise the club’s general committee to sell two plots of land for 73 new homes.

The £7m proceeds, together with ground rental income from a 130-bed hotel and health spa, will part-finance a £10m scheme to refurbish the existing Woolley and Cowdrey stands, The Annexe, dressing rooms and Chiesman Pavilion.

Planning permission for the scheme, which also includes the development of a 300-delegate conference facility and retractable floodlighting, has been granted.

But club officials still need membership backing in order to proceed.

Kent’s chief executive, Paul Millman, sees the meeting as a natural progression to his work since joining the club in 1999.

"This plan has evolved over the past five years," he said. "You can’t get planning permission without first having substance to your plan because councils aren’t in the business of allowing people to build white elephants."

The club’s members and neighbours have, during a two-year consultation period, expressed concerns over reduced car parking, the hotel plan, traffic flow from the ground’s main entrances in Nackington Road and Old Dover Road, floodlighting, and using the main drive as access to the planned new housing development.

Mr Millman went on: "In reality we operate on 45 days’ income from cricket each year, we must work the other 320.

"We will have partnerships with the likes of Persimmon Homes and Radisson that will bring in new business for the club.

"The main principles of the plan that our members and neighbours have seen are embodied in the planning permission. It is a totally linked plan with many conditions, so there can’t be one part of the project without the other."

He added: "I understand and sympathise with the parking issue and with those people who travel from the other end of the county, hence my desire to make sure they’re accommodated.

"There will be 400 spaces available to members with overspill at the Simon Langton Girls’ School.

"I also understand concerns over change and the scale of those changes, but I believe we could all have a ground to be proud of."

The special general meeting is at the Ashford International Hotel at 7pm.