A football club is exploring building a new 15,000-capacity stadium in the outskirts of a city, it has been confirmed.

Cambridge United said it had started discussions with a local developer and a planning body about relocating the club to land around the city's airport, which will be closed by 2029.

No sides have made any formal commitments and work to explore the site's feasibility was due to conclude by Easter, the club said.

Chairman Godric Smith said he expected the League One side to continue playing at their current home – the Abbey Stadium – "for the best part of the next decade regardless of any potential relocation".

The U's are working alongside the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation and developers the Hill Group.

The Hill Group announced in June it had bought the airport and its adjacent land alongside Homes England as part of a project called Cambridge East.

Its chair Andy Hill said at the time he was keen to build a new stadium at the site, but the football club had declined to comment.

The club has now said it commissioned a report earlier this year that found a new stadium would bring "significant economic and community benefits" to Cambridge.

Lifelong Cambridge United fan Richard Arnold, from sports and leisure development specialists Wrenbridge Sport, has been appointed as a stadium adviser.

He will work alongside all three organisations and has worked on similar projects previously, including several of the venues built for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics in London.

Smith said the "ageing" Abbey Stadium "significantly limits the club financially" and that it "has become clearer than ever that our long-term future likely lies elsewhere".

"We own the ground and would ideally redevelop if that were feasible, but multiple studies over many months have shown how difficult that would be and we don't want to put a cap on our ambitions as a club," he said.

The new site is about a mile (1.6km) away from the Abbey, which has been the home of the U's since 1932.

Hill said the company had been involved in "a number of positive meetings" with the club's majority owner Paul Barry.

"We will now work in partnership with the club to explore what might be feasible and, crucially, how and whether a new stadium could be at the heart of the new Cambridge East," he added.

"We are all doing this without any commitment from any party but with a shared desire to try to make it work for all parties if we can."

Homes England previously described Cambridge East as "one of the UK's largest urban extension projects".

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