An application to have a popular park registered as a town green has won support from a local council – subject to a further meeting next week.

Members of Hadleigh Town Council (HTC) voted on two resolutions proposed at its monthly meeting on Thursday.

Both concerned Cox’s Park, officially known as East House Meadow.

The Friends of Cox’s Park group is concerned Babergh District Council (BDC), which owns the park and neighbouring East House, will sell the building to developers with a parcel of the meadow to make it more attractive.

Earlier plans along these lines several years ago were withdrawn by BDC following the presentation of a petition against the idea.

The friends group then registered an application to have the park listed as a town green which would protect it from development.

An inquiry as part of the application was adjourned two weeks ago after BDC presented its evidence, with the friends needing to provide a written response by June 29.

One of the proposals put to the town council asked it to work with the friends group and Babergh District Council to investigate alternative options for the area to safe guard the park for future generations – a vote of the members was passed in favour of the resolution.

However the other proposal, asking for HTC to back the town green application, was only agreed in principle after councillors resolved they needed to see further information about the process.

There will now be an additional meeting of HTC on Thursday for this purpose.

Gavin Talbot, who is from the friends group and is leading the town green application, wanted to include mention of the council’s support in his team’s response to the inquiry.

He said: “We thought we needed to have the town council on side because they are the elected representatives of Hadleigh.

“These are people who live in Hadleigh, work in Hadleigh and know what people think.

“The town green application is a complex thing and only a few people know the full details.

“It is fair enough if the town council want to have a further look at that and understand it in more detail. We’ll see where we go with that.

“The crucial thing is that the town council hopefully put their weight behind looking at alternative options.”