Friday 29 August 2014 14:11, UK
Catterick are pushing on with their bid for all-weather racing with a formal planning application about to be processed.
The racecourse, which hosts both Flat and National Hunt action on the current turf track, began work on the project two years ago in which time they have worked with the BHA to finalise the layout.
With such preliminary work undertaken, a planning application will now be sent to the local authorities with two to three years predicted as a likely timescale for the finalisation of the project.
John Sanderson, chief executive of International Racecourse Management which runs Catterick, told Racing UK: "We started working on this two years ago when we spent quite a lot of time on the design of the track, which will replace the turf Flat track.
"We then had to involve English Heritage because there are a lot of Roman remains around Catterick which took quite a long time.
"We are now formulating our formal planning application to the local authorities.
"Jumping will continue at Catterick as long as I’ve got anything to do with it. They are two separate tracks – they do intertwine once or twice but that’s not an issue and that’s all been approved by the BHA.
"It’s very difficult to predict [a timescale] we are working very closely with the local authority, maybe 2017 something like that."
