MAIDSTONE Borough Council have recommended that planning permission be granted for a new stadium at Whatman Way.

Subject to meeting 22 conditions, the Stones will be allowed to build a new ground at the riverside site - provided councillors vote in favour of the scheme at a public meeting on Thursday night.

If the vote goes in the club’s favour the Stones will be all set to return to County Town for the first time since 1988.

Chairman Paul Bowden Brown said he was “absolutely delighted” with the report’s recommendation. He stressed: "I was very confident all along. I wouldn’t have put all this effort in otherwise.

“I’ve got to thank Trevor Gasson, Brian Morgan and everyone at MBC for all their help, they’ve been first class. Now we’ve just got to hope that common sense prevails and that the vote follows the recommendation.”

The news came as a massive relief to the Stones’ chairman who admitted he would almost certainly have stepped down if the recommendation had gone the other way.

He said: “I was optimistic, because I’ve done everything the council have required of me and I don’t see how it can go against us because there have been no objections.”

“The members could still go against us if they wanted to,” Bowden Brown warned. “If they did I’d talk to my advisers and see if if we had grounds for an appeal, but if for whatever reason they didn’t want us in Maidstone, I’d go.”

But this, he concedes, is a worst case scenario and much of the supporters’ anxiety surrounding the application dates back to an infamous night at the Corn Exchange in November 1991.

Then the Council voted against a plan to build a stadium-cum-leisure-complex at Woodcut Farm, Hollingbourne - within a year the Stones, then a Football League side, had folded.

Bowden Brown, who was present that night, recalled: “I knew it wasn’t going to go through, because it had become a political bunfight.”

“However we’ve done everything the council have asked us this time. This is the future. It could be a new beginning for this club.”

His sentiments were backed by the Stones player/manager Lloyd Hume, who admitted the vote overshadowed events on the field.

“The biggest game we’re going to play is on November 18,” he said. “If it goes our way a cloud will lift over the town.

“I don’t know what would happen if it doesn’t go through, but obviously all we can do is concentrate on the football side.”