TOTTENHAM Hotspur has applied for the right to keep using a giant air tent at its training facility until the end of 2012.

The club has asked Epping Forest District Council for planning permission to keep the inflatable cover over one of the pitches at Spurs Lodge, its training and media complex in Luxborough Lane, Chigwell.

By that time, the club should have relocated its training base to a new £45 million complex in Enfield, which is scheduled to take place in around eighteen months time.

The club runs a number of community projects in the Epping Forest district, such as 'Sportz', which offers free sports training to youngsters aged 11 to 19, and and twice-weekly sessions on the Limes Farm Estate in Chigwell, aimed at reducing petty crime and anti-social behaviour in the area.

The club has said that it will continue to run these projects and maintain its ties with the area even after Spurs Lodge is shut.

So far the club hasn't decided whether to sell the training facility after it moves.