The constructive case
Where a stadium could actually go
We want Peterborough United to have a stadium fit for its ambitions. What the city has never had, in eight years of Embankment promises, is a published comparison of the alternatives. So here is our starting contribution: the sites the city should be testing, honestly assessed, with an open invitation to the club, the council and the Combined Authority to publish theirs.
What a stadium site has to offer
Any serious appraisal tests the same things: enough land for the stadium, its concourses and servicing; transport capacity for thousands of people arriving in a two-hour window; flood risk; what the site costs to assemble and build on; and what the city gives up by using it. National planning policy adds one more, the sequential test: development should go to previously developed land at lower flood risk before anyone touches greenfield floodplain. The Embankment fails that last test by definition. The question is which brownfield sites pass the others.
Peterborough has a genuine advantage here that the Embankment debate has obscured: the city centre's south and west are full of large, previously developed, under-used riverside and station-side sites, all within walking distance of one of the best-connected railway stations in the east of England.
The candidates
London Road, redeveloped in place
The case
Posh have played at London Road since 1934, and the ground was bought back from the council in 2022. It sits ten minutes' walk from the station, next to the river the club says it wants, with the council's large Pleasure Fair Meadow car park immediately alongside offering land for expansion, parking and servicing. Clubs like Liverpool at Anfield and Fulham at Craven Cottage have shown that stands can be rebuilt one at a time while the team plays on, transforming capacity without ever leaving home. It is the cheapest option, the least risky, and the one that keeps a century of identity where it grew.
The challenges
The club's stated reason for wanting to move is that the ground is hemmed in by the residential streets around it, making larger stands difficult. That is a real constraint, but it is an argument for a creative phased design using the car park land, not proof of impossibility. The honest question, never publicly answered, is what capacity a full London Road rebuild could reach and at what cost, compared with building new. That analysis should be published before any greenspace is touched.
The Asda Rivergate site
The case
The Asda superstore and its car parks at West Rivergate sit on a large slab of previously developed land beside the Nene, around three minutes' walk from the railway station, on Bourges Boulevard with more than a dozen bus routes at the door. It offers the same riverside setting and city centre location claimed for the Embankment, on land that is already concrete. A stadium here would anchor the regeneration of the station-to-river corridor rather than consuming the city's park, and supermarkets relocate far more easily than greenspace regenerates.
The challenges
This is an operating store on land the club does not control, so it needs a willing landowner, a relocation deal for Asda and serious land assembly work, none of it quick or cheap. Riverside brownfield still needs flood engineering, though building on existing hardstanding is exactly what the sequential test prefers. To be clear: no official body has assessed this site. That is our point. Why not?
Land around the railway station
The case
The swathe of car parks and under-used land around Peterborough station is the city's biggest regeneration opportunity and its best-connected location by a distance: East Coast Main Line trains, every bus in the city, and the largest possible catchment arriving without a car. A stadium beside the platforms would be busy all week, not just on matchdays, hosting concerts, conferences and events for visitors who can step off a train at its door. For a venue whose business case leans on more than football, nothing beats that.
The challenges
The station quarter has its own emerging plans for offices, homes and a new entrance, ownership is fragmented between the council, rail bodies and private interests, and fitting a stadium footprint would take masterplan-level redesign. It may prove impractical. But a site this well-connected should be formally ruled out with published reasons, not simply never examined.
The former Showground and other large sites
The case
The former East of England Showground land at Alwalton and other large sites near the parkways offer what city centre sites cannot: room. Space for the stadium, the pool, the concert venue, thousands of parking spaces and future expansion, with direct access from the parkway network and without demolishing or displacing anything in the centre.
The challenges
Out-of-centre stadiums trade connection for convenience: weaker public transport, more traffic by design, less benefit to city centre businesses, and planning policy rightly prefers town centre locations for major leisure uses. The Showground is also now earmarked for housing. We include it because an honest appraisal tests everything, including the options we like least.
The Embankment, for comparison
Why it keeps failing
Judged by the same tests: the land is free only because it is a park, and its real price is the permanent loss of the city's principal greenspace and events ground. It is a future floodplain the Environment Agency expects rivers to need more of through 2070 to 2125, failing the sequential test that every alternative above passes. Access depends on residential Bishop's Road. And after eight years, no planning application has ever been submitted. The Embankment is not the easy option. It is the option that has failed for the better part of a decade while the alternatives went unexamined.
Our ask is simple: show your working
The 2020 feasibility work and the 2022 Embankment Masterplan made provision for a stadium on the park, but no options appraisal comparing alternative sites has ever been published by the club, Peterborough City Council or the Combined Authority. Before any special development strategy touches the Embankment, the city is entitled to see a genuine, costed comparison of the alternatives, including the ones on this page, carried out to the same standard any private developer would be held to.
If that appraisal honestly shows a better home for Posh than the city's park, everyone wins: the club gets its stadium, the city keeps its green, and the Embankment Masterplan's premier public park can finally be delivered. If the appraisal is never done, residents are entitled to draw their own conclusions about why.
Sources
- The 2022 Embankment Masterplan Peterborough Telegraph: the masterplan's provision for a stadium and its warning that roads sever the Embankment from the city.
- Why the club says London Road constrains it StadiumDB: the dense residential surroundings cited as the reason expansion is difficult.
- London Road Stadium The ground's history, location and capacity.
- Peterborough City Council: Embankment Programme The council's current programme for the wider Embankment area.
- National planning guidance: flood risk and the sequential test Why development is steered to previously developed land at lower flood risk first.