Bristol City Football Club's (BCFC) plans for a new 30,000-seat stadium have been dealt a blow after the local authority refused permission for a supermarket development.

Sainsbury's had lodged plans to move its Winterstoke Road store to the club's current Ashton Gate site in order to help fund the development of the proposed Ashton Vale regional stadium. Bristol City Council's development control committee (south and east), however, went against the advice of planning officers and rejected the proposed supermarket scheme.

BCFC chair Steve Lansdown said: "If Bristol City FC want to have a first-class stadium and the city of Bristol wants to have a regional stadium then we need the money from all sorts of places for that to happen. "If you suddenly take away a massive proportion of the funding from the superstore not going ahead then you need to find that somewhere else."

The npower Championship club has already received planning consent from the city council and North Somerset Council for the development of the Ashton Vale stadium.