The Football League have today accepted controversial plans which will make it easier for the top clubs to snap up the country’s leading talent on the cheap.

The majority of the 72 Football League clubs voted in favour of accepting the Premier League’s proposal to overhaul the academy structure in England.

The acceptance of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which will result in the tribunal system that is currently used being replaced, is sure to anger those Football League clubs who invest heavily in their youth development programmes.

Under the new proposals, it is claimed clubs will no longer have to agree a fee when attempting to sign a young player or go to a tribunal. Instead, compensation will be decided based on how long the player has been part of the academy, with a set fee for each year he has been at the club.

The Guardian uses the example of Luke Garbutt to illustrate. When Everton signed the 16-year-old defender from Leeds United in 2009, a tribunal ordered them to pay an initial £600,000. The paper claims under the new system this would have been capped at a maximum of £131,000.

The Daily Mail is reporting that under the new plans, Chelsea would only need to pay MK Dons £50,000 for Oluwaseyi Ojo despite claims they were lining up a £1.5m bid for the starlet.

Another one of the controversial changes is that clubs will no longer only be able to sign players who live within 90 minutes of the club.

A leading Football League academy director told the Guardian: “If a club wants a player that badly then they pay what he’s worth, and he goes.

“But with the derisory compensation they’re proposing I’m not sure the clubs will want all the players they’re getting. They may just be casting the net.”

Those in favour of the proposals point to the increase in the amount of time players will now spend training with their clubs.

Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, had previously described the EPPP as "a supertanker that's very difficult to stop now."

The Guardian claims the Premier League were encouraging clubs to vote in favour of the plans by withholding part of its annual solidarity payment to the Football League – the £5.4m ring-fenced for youth development – since the summer until the motion was passed.

It said that if the plans were not accepted then the maximum grant received by Football League clubs this season will be capped at £120,000.

The Premier League accepted the plans in June and this week the Football League wrote to its member clubs saying “having balanced the pros and cons of the offer the league's board has unanimously agreed to recommend these proposals to member clubs."