Work on a huge 5,000-seater arena for Bristol’s professional basketball team – which will also be a large-scale entertainment venue and convention centre – will begin next year, stadium bosses at Ashton Gate have confirmed.

Bristol Flyers boss Lisa Knights has confirmed that the Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter is going ahead, after ‘hugely frustrating’ legal issues were overcome relating to the linked housing development half a mile away.

Bristol Live revealed back in September that a local waste firm’s attempts to challenge the planning permission granted for 500 new homes on a large field on the edge of Bristol had been thrown out by a High Court judge, which cleared the way for both that development at the Sporting Quarter next to Ashton Gate.

The legal challenge put the entire project in doubt for more than a year with the Lansdown family saying it could be ‘abandoned’, but now Bristol Sport has confirmed the new arena will happen – and work is expected to start within a year, with demolition crews moving in to the area probably in late summer or early autumn next year.

The legal issues put the project on hold, but now the chairman of Ashton Gate Stadium, Martin Griffiths, said the project team had been re-started.

“I’m delighted that the ruling in the High Court means that two very significant development projects for Bristol can finally be restarted,” he said. “It has been hugely frustrating to have these multi-million-pound investments into South Bristol so delayed, but we are pleased that Justice Lavender dismissed the case, and we are now able to pick up where we left off a year ago. We have now re-started the project team for the Sporting Quarter and hope to break ground next year,” he added.

The first thing that will happen will be the demolition of the closed down Wickes DIY store and the other industrial buildings between Winterstoke Road and the stadium. The DIY store was recently taken over for a controversial and illegal rave, and the empty building will remain as it is well into next year, as preparations are made for its demolition.

In its place will be a multi-purpose arena, which will be home to the Bristol Flyers, bringing all three sports under the Bristol Sport banner into one place. “This has been a long-time coming and Flyers cannot wait for it to get started,” said Lisa Knights, the chief executive officer of the Flyers. “Since 2018, when these plans were first unveiled, the sport of basketball has grown massively in the UK.

“With sell-out crowds consistently at our current home of SGS College Arena, having a bigger, purpose-built venue will ensure the financial sustainability of the Flyers and an exciting future for basketball in Bristol and the South West,” she added.

Alongside the arena, there will also be, eventually, a multi-storey car park on the part of the Wickes site off Wedlock Way opposite KFC, and a hotel, offices, and a block of flats on other areas of the site between the stadium and Winterstoke Road and Marsh Road.

At the field next to Ashton Vale – which 15 years ago was the site of a proposed new stadium – a new development of around 500 new homes in a development called Longmoor Village, including more than 150 affordable homes.

A waste firm called ETM – one of the biggest waste processing companies in Bristol – is based on the corner of that field on the Ashton Gate Trading Estate. The firm tried to challenge the council’s decision to award planning permission for new homes close to their site, claiming the people who will move into the new homes could be able to complain about the noise of their operation.

But the council said they had calculated this would not be an issue, and a High Court judge told ETM that their lawyers had not submitted the judicial review challenge within the legal deadline, so it wouldn’t be heard and they couldn’t appeal. That clears the way for planning permission to be confirmed, and then the sale of land by the company owned by Bristol Sport owner Steve Lansdown to a property developer – with the money helping to fund the Sporting Quarter development back at the stadium.