TALKS between football boss John Batchelor and a York council chief over York City's hopes of moving to a new stadium at Clifton Moor have proved "productive."

The City chairman met Roy Templeman, City of York Council's director of environment and development services, yesterday following his diatribe last week against "inept" planning officers at the authority. He said then that they should be doing more to assist the club in moving to a new home.

Mr Batchelor said last night that he had had a productive meeting with Mr Templeman, which should lead to further negotiations in the near future.

Mr Templeman said today that he had been prepared to "bury all the filibustering and shouting of last week about inept officers, because we have an interest in maintaining football in York. We have cleared the air. We did have productive discussions."

He said that to press ahead with an application for within the green belt, the club would first have to demonstrate why the stadium could not be built elsewhere outside the belt, and it had now agreed to do this.

He said the requirement to do this was laid down in national legislation. "It is not the council being bureaucratic. John may not have fully understood that before," he said, stressing that other issues would have to be addressed subsequently, including traffic problems.

Updated: 11:51 Wednesday, July 31, 2002