FOOTBALL League chairman Greg Clarke hailed English football’s new Elite Player Performance Plan as ‘‘a major step forward’’ after the organisation’s member clubs approved the proposals.

The plans were passed by a margin of 46 to 22 at yesterday’s meeting of the Football League clubs at Walsall’s Banks’s Stadium, with three no-shows and one abstention.

The new system will increase the amount of coaching contact time for players in the country’s top academies, those granted category one status.

Payments to clubs for youth development will increase but the regulations also include the abolition of the transfer tribunal system, to be replaced by a fixed level of compensation – leading to fears that lower-league teams will lose their top young talent to bigger clubs on the cheap.

Clarke told Sky Sports News: ‘‘We had a vote and it was strongly supported – the national game is behind developing better talent for the national side.

‘‘There’s two aspects to it, there’s the Elite Player Performance Plan which is pretty uncontentious really, a lot of good work done by a lot of people.

‘‘Then there’s the compensation plan, which determines how much large clubs pay smaller clubs for youth talent at different ages, and it’s important clubs knew what they were signing up for and that each club had to decide whether they would be better or worse off financially under the new scheme.’’ The new tariff approach to transfer fees for young players will see an end to deals such as the initial £600,000 fee that took 16-year-old Luke Garbutt from Leeds to Everton in 2009, or 14-year-old MK Dons starlet Seyi Ojo’s proposed £1.5million switch to Chelsea which was reportedly agreed this week.

Clubs will be paid £3,000- per-year for every year of a player’s development between the ages of nine and 11.

The fee per year from 12 to 16 will depend on the selling club’s academy status within the four-tier system, but ranges between £12,500 and £40,000.

The Dons also received £2.5m from West Ham for forward Sam Baldock this summer, but chairman Pete Winkleman is behind the proposals.

‘‘Elite Player Performance is making sure we can develop players through the Football League, through the Premier League, for the benefit of our national team, and that was at the forefront of everybody’s mind,’’ he told Sky Sports News.

‘‘Of course there are differences of opinion over how you might be able to do that, and there’s lots of commercial things that people have to think about, but I think the really positive thing that comes out of today and really out of this whole re-look at youth development, is just how important it is for the future of football in this country that we get it right.’’ Peterborough director Barry Fry, though, told BBC Sport: ‘‘What frightens me is that a lot of clubs will pull out of having a youth system altogether.

‘‘Lower league clubs will look at how much it costs to run their academy or school of excellence and think that, if the Premier League can nick their best players for a low price, what is the point of investing in it?’’ Clarke acknowledged those fears but hopes they will prove unfounded.

He told Sky Sports News: ‘‘Certainly if we start losing clubs from youth development, that will be a danger sign.

‘‘We hope Football League clubs continue to develop, retain and fill their first teams with top local talent.

‘‘There’s always a danger under the new scheme that larger clubs will be a bit more predatory. We hope we don’t see that, but I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that this is a major step forward for English football.

‘‘There are lots of good things about this – increased development in football, increased budgets for football development, state-of-the-art tools to measure performance and a consistent approach across the English game which should have a conveyor belt of talent all the way into the national side to allow us to compete with sides like Spain, Holland and Germany, who have more contact hours in their youth development.

‘‘While there are a couple of issues we were concerned about, one of which was compensation, we are strong supporters of the plan itself.

‘‘I think it’s a positive step, there’ll be more money to spend on youth development which means more kids will get a chance. There’s a chance that some of those kids will go to bigger clubs more quickly than they would have done, but overall we have a better system going forward.’’