The University of Brighton has dropped its challenge to Brighton and Hove Albion's plans for a new community stadium.

It has agreed to support a revised application for the 22,000-seat stadium - eliminating one of the main hurdles standing in the way of the scheme.

Fresh plans have been submitted to modify Village Way and improve access to the proposed bus and coach park serving the ground.

The challenge by the university, which owns about a third of the proposed stadium site, threatened to wreck Albion's dream of moving to a new ground.

The two sides had been locked in talks for months, with the university seeking legal safeguards to ensure student life would not be damaged by the stadium.

A public inquiry into the scheme was adjourned in June after the university said it was "deeply concerned" by the plans.

It said it wanted to ensure the building and running of the club did not interfere with its own work, the security of its campus was not affected by the arrival and departure of fans and that transport to the campus was not affected on match days.

A planning inspector gave the club three months extra to resolve the dispute as it came perilously close to withdrawing the application to build at Falmer, jeopardising the future of the £48 million scheme.

The university is now satisfied with the revised layout and will be backing the scheme when the inquiry resumes if discussions are finalised on an agreement enabling the campus and the stadium to "successfully co-exist".

Albion chief executive Martin Perry said: "We are very pleased we have been able to agree these modifications with the University of Brighton and we are grateful to them for their support.

"We have been able to submit a planning application.

"It will now go through the process to be considered at the final stage of the inquiry which starts again in October.

"We've also made some very significant progress with the university on the legal agreements. We've got more meetings to come, but we're now very much on track to have it all signed up prior to the inquiry resuming.

"We're feeling we've made a lot of progress and we're very pleased."

A spokesman for the University of Brighton said: "We are pleased to have reached an agreement on this issue."

It is expected the application will be called in by the Secretary of State to be considered with the main application for the stadium at the resumption of the inquiry.

Parties at the inquiry signed up to a procedure to allow this to happen.

Falmer Parish Council is among the objectors to the scheme, however.

Planning inspector John Collyer will reconvene the inquiry for two weeks in the autumn to deal with final matters and the overall decision will rest with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

Monday August 4, 2003