Merton Council has apologised for allowing Wimbledon FC to leave the borough 20 years ago, leading club's eventual demise and reincarnation as AFC Wimbledon.

Councillor Stephen Alambritis, the council leader, made the apology to Wimbledon FC fans, who saw the club sold off as a franchise to Milton Keynes 10 years after they lost their home ground in Plough Lane, Wimbledon, in 1991.

He said: “There should be an apology from the council about the actions of the administration at that time, which was very loose and gave way to Wimbledon losing their home base.”

The decision by the council to remove a key clause in the Plough Lane site’s planning status, which said it could only be used for sports, leisure or recreational purposes, allowed Sam Hammam to sell the club to developers.

Mr Hammam, who bought the club in 1983, decided to enter a groundshare with Crystal Palace FC from August 1991 after Wimbledon FC’s board decided to a redevelop Plough Lane – which had to be renovated to conform to mandatory safety standards for all football stadia issued by the Taylor Report in 1990 – would be too expensive.

The ground was eventually sold to Safeway in 1998, whose plan to build a supermarket on the site failed after four years, when they sold it on to David Wilson Homes, which eventually built nearly 600 flats there in 2008.

Coun Alambritis insisted the move to Merton was now a top priority for the council, which has given the club a personal hotline to the planning department, and now employs an ex-Islington Council regeneration officer who helped pave the way for Arsenal Football Club’s move to the Emirates Stadium, which opened in July 2006.

He said: “What I want to do is make amends and what we’ve done is two things. One, we’ve tweaked our planning guidance to allow a football team back into the borough.

“Two, we’ve looked at our resources and expertise in the planning department and we now have someone who worked for Islington Council who worked on the Emirates Stadium. That’s a huge amount of experience there.

“Whenever AFC Wimbledon want a meeting or information about possible sites, that will be made available. It’s like a hotline that Erik Samuelson, the chief executive, has to the borough’s regeneration department.”

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