THE leader of a council which was condemned for making a string of errors over Darlington Football Club's £20m stadium last night insisted that the authority had kept the Quakers in business.

The Northern Echo revealed yesterday how a Local Government Ombudsman report had suggested that Darlington Borough Council should have sought a High Court injunction to block the venue's opening.

The Reynolds Arena opened in August 2003, despite several conditions of the original planning agreement for the stadium having been breached.

The ombudsman said that there should have been in place by the day of the first match a residents' parking scheme, a subsidised bus service and improvements to the roads around the Neasham Road ground.

In her report about the matter, ombudsman Patricia Thomas said the failure to seek an injunction because of the breaches of planning conditions represented a case of maladministration.

However, council leader John Williams claimed the authority had taken the decision not to pursue legal action in the wider interests of the community.

Mrs Thomas's report said that the council's approach "had the effect of undermining the confidence of residents".

But Coun Williams said: "If we had taken the legal action suggested by the ombudsman, Darlington would not have a football club now.

"If we had done that, we would have automatically put the football club out of business because it wouldn't have been able to fulfil its existing fixtures.

"All the football history of the town would have been consigned to the dustbin.

"The club would have gone under and been disqualified from the league, and the vast majority of the Darlington community would have been deeply aggrieved at that."

The Quakers' dilapidated old Feethams home could not have been brought back into use as a last resort, Coun Williams said.

He also pointed to the authority's record, saying more than 20,000 planning applications had been processed over the past 25 years - and he said that on only one other occasion had an ombudsman's ruling gone against the council.

Coun Williams said he accepted some of the ombudsman's findings and that action would be taken.

The report will also be considered by a full council meeting at a later date.

He also insisted that he had no regrets about the council's decision to grant planning consent for the stadium - or to allow a 25,000 capacity.

"We had the clearest possible steering from (then Quakers chairman) George Reynolds that if that was not the capacity, he would walk away," he said.