³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Southend United chief executive Tom Lawrence has admitted that final completion of a takeover of the club could still be a couple of months away.

A deal between owner Ron Martin and a consortium led by Australian Justin Rees was agreed in December.

But the 10-member consortium, which includes Lawrence, is still waiting for the go-ahead from the city council.

"Contracts were exchanged. Justin and Ron have done what they need to do," Lawrence told ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Look East.

Martin had planned to move Southend away from Roots Hall, their home since 1955, to a new purpose-built stadium at Fossett's Farm.

But the consortium want the club to stay put and last November the council approved a report recommending 500 new homes be built out of town instead of on the Roots Hall site.

"A step needs to be taken by the council that involves them doing a due diligence exercise on the movement of dwellings from this site to the Fossett's site so we can stay where we are," Lawrence explained.

"We are all now waiting for the council to go through that process..

"People are nervous about putting timescales on things - six to eight weeks is what I've heard in terms of the due diligence and it might take a couple of weeks after that for the (council) cabinet procedure to go through.

"We are a couple of months away from things being completed, which is not ideal, but we've all been waiting some time and we'll just keep going until it's completed."

Despite the hold-up, the consortium is effectively in day-to-day charge and have brought the club out of a transfer embargo and recruited a number of new players to boost manager Kevin Maher's squad.

The Shrimpers, relegated from the EFL in 2021, are 11th in the National League following Tuesday's 1-1 draw with Wealdstone, 11 points off the play-off places and five points above the relegation zone.

The consortium hopes to reach a "break-even position" within five years and once formally in control have plans to redevelop the ground.

Lawrence said: "The whole stadium needs a lift, all four stands need some work undertaken.

"We're hoping to get on with the West sooner rather than later; ideally we'd like to start before May 2025. We'll then turn our attention to the East and that's going to be a complete demolition job."

He continued: "Getting the West improved, we can do relatively quickly and at modest capital expenditure. The East is going to take some significant planning because we want to have conference and banqueting facilities built into it.

"It's not going to be bog standard, we want something we can look back on in 20 years and say 'I helped create that legacy'. Equally, we're not going to be too design-driven, it has to be a functional commercial space that we can use to generate income and get to that break-even position."

The CEO confirmed that the new board would be "respectful" of the club's heritage when drawing up plans for a replacement East stand.

"When we get the initial plans together, we will take input from the new advisory board that's been set up, we don't want to lose our identity.

"But it's difficult to maintain, moving towards end of life and the sooner it goes the better, in my opinion."