A rugby club's dream of moving to a new home so it can enhance its status and provide for growing numbers of youngsters, will move a step closer next week.

Harrogate, North Yorkshire's leading rugby union club, wants to move from cramped conditions at Claro Road - its home for more than a century - to Moorlands Farm, at Killinghall.

The plan will be scrutinised by a Government inquiry in March after a call-in following Harrogate Borough Council's backing for the scheme.

But a lot will depend on a planning consent for a housing development at the Claro Road ground, where developers are poised to pay the club £6m if they get the go-ahead to build.

Councillors are expected to give the green light to 215 homes - 125 houses and 90 flats - on the 10.8-acre site when they meet on Thursday. This decision will then go before the inquiry, which opens on March 18.

Major development team leader Anne Smith will tell the development control committee the scheme is both necessary and acceptable, and should be supported.

It would result in the relocation of the rugby club, which was the over-riding objective.

Mrs Smith said the scheme included "a reasonable level" of affordable housing, with 78 of the homes being offered for rented or shared ownership.

Leisure director Kevin Douglas also backs the plan, which he says will have the knock-on effect of increasing rugby-playing opportunities, bring heightened standards of performance - the club is currently third in National League Division Two, its highest placing - and improve the quality of sporting excellence.