Gloucester City look to extend Cheltenham Town groundshare

Meadow Park was left under several feet of flood water in 2007

Gloucester City are in talks with Cheltenham Town about renewing their groundshare deal for next season.

The Tigers have been without a permanent home since losing their Meadow Park ground to flooding in 2007.

They have played at Whaddon Road since 2010 having previously shared with Cirencester and Forest Green Rovers.

"I've had discussions with Paul [Baker, Robins chairman] - he's set out what he wants us to do," Tigers chairman Nigel Hughes told BBC Gloucestershire.

"We need to consider our options for next season and hopefully we can do that with Cheltenham Town."

Plans to build a new stadium for the Blue Square Bet North side on the old Meadow Park site are in motion but Hughes believes it is unlikely it will be ready for the 2012/13 season.

"We have to be realistic if we were to get the go-ahead tomorrow. There's no way we'd have a stadium fit for purpose in time [for next season].

"Part-way through the season we will have to see where we are because these things unfortunately do take time.

"We've completed the transport assessment which we've been asked to do and then suddenly we were asked to provide an additional report, which again was extra cost to the owner, which we are in the process of doing.

"Hopefully once that's been finished we'll get the rubber stamp and we can proceed."

Hughes added: "It's been a long year - we've got a lot of fans out there who are looking expectantly at the development and we want to tell them what's going on but unfortunately the wheels turn quite slowly."