Dundee to remain at Dens Park for next two years amid ongoing stadium talks with Transport Scotland

Dundee Football Club will remain at Dens Park for the next two years as discussions over a new stadium remain stalled.

Managing director John Nelms revealed that talks with Transport Scotland over a suitable entrance to the proposed new venue are holding up the move.

He is now calling for the national transport agency to get back around the table and “draw a line in the sand” so they can start moving forward.

The long, drawn-out plans for a new facility at Camperdown Park are currently sitting with the council.

If approved, it would see the club clear a significant hurdle in its bid to leave the 125-year-old Dens Park, which currently costs the Dark Blues £700,000 a year in maintenance fees.

A move away from Dens Park was first looked into back in 2016, with Camperdown Park soon identified as the ideal site for a 12,500-seater stadium with a hotel and restaurant nearby.

Speaking to STV News on Tuesday, Nelms said: “Unfortunately, we aren’t much further along than the last time we spoke. Everything is in place, and we are waiting on an issue with Transport Scotland that we have been working on for several months.

“We are working towards a resolution on that, and we are getting close, but it is time to push that on and come to a final conclusion.

“Back in 2017 we had entrance 5c, and that was the preferred entrance for Transport Scotland at the time.

“Standards have moved on since then, and potentially we’d have to move the entrance ever so slightly in order for us to meet the standard that is now.

“We have both of those options in play at the moment and we are just kind of going round in circles to decide which one is most appropriate and what we need to do for each one of those.

“So I just want to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘let’s pick one and drive that forward’. This is just planning in principle, so if we agree on one just now we can get to the finer details later when we get to final planning.

“This is just planning in principle, so let’s get it over the line. Just now it’s about the finer details rather than any red flags.

“Now I think we just need to get in a room and say ‘that’s it, we all agree on that’ and then we can move forward.

“We are nearing £3m in costs and development to this day, and those continue to go up. The football club is still at Dens Park and will probably be in Dens Park for the next two years.

“There’s a big cost to keeping Dens Park, looking at the way Dens Park is, it doesn’t increase the entertainment value for the fans and that is something we are desperate to have happen.”

A Transport Scotland spokesperson said: “For clarity, it is the developer’s responsibility to promote an access strategy that meets the needs of their proposed development, supported by a robust assessment of its impact on the local and trunk road network.

“Neither of the trunk road junction options proposed in recent months has been shown to be effective and the supporting traffic figures remain open to considerable uncertainty. It sits wholly with the developer and their consultants to settle these issues and present stakeholders with a coherent, evidenced and defensible plan. So far, they have failed to do this.

“We have repeatedly shown willingness to engage with the developer to address these issues, but they have yet to provide the information necessary that would allow us to give a definitive response to their proposals. We also remain in discussions with the local authority over the wider concerns about the lack of clear and sustained progress the developers and their consultants are making”.

On the pitch, the club are currently in a fight for Premiership survival as they sit in the relegation play-off place with just six games remaining.

They are five points ahead of bottom club St Johnstone and one behind tenth-placed Ross County.

Tony Docherty’s men take on the league’s in-form side when they travel to Easter Road to play Hibernian this weekend in the last game before the split.