Oxford United has been given a month to produce a detailed timetable for the completion of its £15m half-built stadium.

According to rules set down in the Taylor Report, which followed the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in which 96 fans died, the club must have an all-seater stadium by the start of the 1999 season.

Now Oxford City Council, which owns the land at Minchery Farm where the club's half-built new stadium stands, wants the club to produce within a month a timetable for its completion.

The move means that United must decide to either revamp its present Manor ground or re-start work on its new stadium by July 14.

Construction work stopped on United's 15,000-seater stadium 18 months ago when contractors Taylor Woodrow walked off site due to a row over payments.

City council leader Stan Taylor told the Oxford Mail : "We will need the timetable by then so that a recommendation about how to proceed can be put to the full council on July 27. "It's true that the next few months are critical, but we anticipate some hopeful suggestions.

"It's important that we have the timetable by July 14 as the full council does not meet again until October - and we understand that work must re-start in the autumn or early winter if the stadium is to be finished on time."

City council advisers and officers will examine any financial package that the club may put forward for completing the stadium.

One solution to United's financial problems could be to allow the club to develop land adjoining the new stadium site. But Mr Taylor said that any proposed development of that land would have to go out to tender.

He said: "It does concern me that we are not receiving a return from the land. We need every capital receipt we can get."

United managing director Keith Cox has said that the club is negotiating with a "favoured prospective purchaser" of the club's parent company OU Holdings, which owns 89.5 per cent of the club. OU Holdings is currently the property of racing car designer Robin Herd.

Mr Cox told the Oxford Mail he was unavailable for comment on the council's request for a timetable until Monday or Tuesday next week.

But at a public meeting held at the Manor Ground in April he said: "Members of the council are becoming impatient and this is understandable.

"Equally importantly in the season commencing in August 1999 the three-year standing exemption following promotion runs out and the sections of the Taylor Report concerning safe terracing come into full effect.

"The club simply has to complete its relocation by then or face financial ruin because it could only have tiny crowds licensed at the Manor.

"All of this operates as an incentive to rapid action, but reality dictates that neither an announcement on changed ownership, nor on a re-start, can be made until prospective new owners or their representatives have met and agreed with both Taylor Woodrow and the council."

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