BURY chairman Stewart Day says the club’s deal to lease Manchester City’s former Carrington training ground is a “signal of intent”.

The Shakers will relocate every team – from the under-8s to the senior side – to the new base, which has been leased for the next five years.

“Being able to have a Premier League standard training facility as our base is a signal of our very real intent to provide our staff and players of all ages with the optimum facilities to support their development and training," he said.

Day has worked hard behind the scenes to find an alternative to the club’s current training ground – Lower Gigg – ever since he took over as chairman in the summer of 2013.

A deal to team up with Bury Grammar School and relocate there was close to being concluded last year and youth director Ian Kendall only recently said he felt that partnership could still happen.

But the club’s board is also known to have been assessing land in the Bury area to build their own training base.

It is not yet clear if either of those plans have been shelved indefinitely, but the five-year agreement with City would at least give the club time to raise sufficient money to fund any future development.

In the short-term, however, Day is confident manager David Flitcroft now has the best possible facility to promote young players through the system and create a side capable of meeting his five-year plan to take the club into the Championship.

“We are thrilled to have reached this agreement with Manchester City, particularly given the keen interest in a number of parties in leasing the site,” he said, after announcing the deal to move into the 22-acre site by Sunday.

“The facility at Carrington is out of this world and it was an opportunity that we simply could not turn down.

“It is within easy reach of the Bury area, being situated so close to the Greater Manchester ring road, and crucially enables us to fulfil our vision of having our academy team, from under-8s up, playing together at the same time.

“Whilst we will have fond memories and attachments to our Lower Gigg base, the centre was not sufficient to support our long term ambitions.”

City only recently relocated to a new facility in East Manchester, just next to the Etihad Stadium.

But while the move from Lower Gigg will be taking Bury further away from their own ground, Day believes their new site, just off the M60, is convenient enough to make the move easy to manage.

It will also be a marked improvement on Lower Gigg, which only has one pitch that regularly became waterlogged during the winter months.

Flitcroft has often been forced to move training elsewhere, regularly holding sessions at Bolton Wanderers’ training ground in Euxton and their academy site in Lostock.

Carrington will be fully re-branded to make Bury feel at home, while the club will have uninterrupted use of the facilities, which include six turf pitches, an artificial pitch, fitness, medical and performance analysis suites and various changing rooms and multi-purpose offices.