COLIN Gordon says Kidderminster Harriers' new deal with Birmingham Metropolitan College is nearing completion.

The club and BMet have held extensive talks during the last year over how their partnership to run the football academy will continue.

Gordon confirmed the new agreement is set to be worth four times more than the previous one but that the club will also take on greater responsibility for maintaining pitches at the College's Centre of Sporting Excellence.

The academy has been a big success, producing talents such as Luke Maxwell, who was sold to Birmingham City for £75,000.

Youngsters Dan Sweeney and Tyrone Williams have also broke into the first team.

The chairman is keen to ensure the club does not rely on gate receipts to generate their finances and also plans to launch a higher education establishment next year.

He said: “The papers are with the lawyers but basically everything has been agreed.

“Heads of terms and everything else have been signed, we’ve just got to dot the i’s and cross the t’s so we’re in a much better position with them than the deal we had before.

“But that now allows us to go to the next stage which is higher education. We had to get the deal with BMet sorted and signed.

“This time next year we’re hoping to be leading up to the opening of our higher education college and hopefully we’ll have lots of people enrolling in it, which would give us a nice platform going forward.

“It ended up being worth about four times the previous deal but there are caveats, we are now responsible for the grounds. We have to employ the ground staff, so all-in-all it’s a better deal for us all-round.

“We want the pitches down there to be good for us and the academy boys and we felt we had the expertise to do that.”

As part of their relationship with the college, the club are also being provided with their own training ground on the Chainwire site.

Gordon added: "I would hope that we would have the new training ground and driving range in place by next season.

“We are a bit behind but it’s not the college’s fault. The College has put a lot of money into the two main pitches but we can’t get on them for a couple of weeks which is frustrating. They are not a million miles away but in the meantime we are having to use pitch three which is adequate.”