City councillors are demanding to know the names of the faceless men behind the Oxford United takeover.

Council leader Stan Taylor insisted that he would not stand for any more secrecy over the club's mystery buyers.

Mr Taylor told the council last night that they had received confirmation that cash would be available from September and Taylor Woodrow, the contractors, would restart work on the new stadium at Minchery Farm as planned in November.

He said: "Taylor Woodrow have agreed with the new owners the way in which they will be paid. The next milestone is that by the end of August the detailed costings and programme dates will be finalised to enable Taylor Woodrow to mobilise the restart in November."

A team of architects, surveyors and engineers is ready to start checking the site, where building stopped in January 1997, to identify what needs to be done. The new owners would meet the bill.

Mr Taylor welcomed this as very positive news but added to a round of applause: "I'm not prepared to receive any information which I cannot share with all the members of this council.

"I'm not prepared to ask councillors to enter into negotiations without knowing the names of the consortium. As councillors, we have to be open and accountable to the public."

He said that Oxford United, which had until yesterday to show it had the money to restart work, still had to pay back £1.9m owed to the city council by the end of the year.

Cllr Tony Stockford, who represents Blackbird Leys, criticised the secrecy. He said: "It holds the council, which holds the purse strings, in utter contempt. If they have got nothing to hide, what's the big deal?"

He asked Mr Taylor: "What would you say to a commun- ity-charge payer when the club pays half a million pounds for a player but owes something in excess of £1m to the city council? How would I go about explaining it to them?"

Mr Taylor said: "It's not very easy to explain the finances of big business. Unless they have decent players, they won't be able to continue in the league. All that we have heard is what's been expressed in the Oxford Mail."

Cllr Val Smith, also a Blackbird Leys councillor, was concerned that they were still in a situation where nothing was really happening. She said: "Why are they refusing to tell us who they are? If this deal was so secure, they would be telling us who they are. I'm very concerned about that. I feel we have been used and abused.

"I think it has gone far enough down the road and it's now time for us to say to Oxford United we are going to take action. We have put up with enough."

Mr Taylor said: "I can understand the sheer frustration of particularly the councillors for Blackbird Leys and Littlemore. They have their constituents looking over this site. We have to follow this very carefully and very closely."

Andrew Wadsted, of Taylor Woodrow, said he did not know the names of the United buyers. "We are satisfied that there is a bona fide prospective purchaser of the club."

Under rules set down by the Taylor Report, United must move out of the Manor Ground at Headington by August 1999. To meet that deadline, construction work on the new stadium must get under way by November or December this year.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.