Peterborough Panthers support group launch plan to save club track

Peterborough Panthers are currently without a stadium after its racetrack at the East of England Showground site shut in October

Fans have launched a new plan to save their speedway team's 53-year-old home from demolition.

Peterborough Panthers are without a home after their East of England Showground track shut in October.

The stadium is set for redevelopment after a planning application was submitted to build 1,500 new homes on the site.

Supporters want the venue to become an Asset of Community Value, which would offer it extra protection.

However, demolition work has already started at the stadium, with a safety fence and roofing being removed.

The planning application has outlined plans to build a hotel, a school and a leisure village on the site.

Members of the support group said they wanted the speedway track to be part of this offering.

AEPG, agents of the showground's owners - the East of England Agricultural Society - said speedway would have to cease at the site regardless of any planning applications for new developments on the land.

• Sadness as top speedway track faces the end

It was already causing a significant financial loss, AEPG said, and would only continue to do so in future. 

Despite this, Peterborough Panthers fans hope that community value status will help support their campaign. Julie Stevenson, independent councillor for Orton Waterville Parish Council, said that "whether or not it goes through is not the point".

"We're going to show good faith and apply," she added.

The Panthers have raced at the East of England Showground stadium for more than five decades, since their formation in 1970.