Carlisle United are seeking fresh talks with the city council over where the Blues play their football.

Blues chief executive Nigel Clibbens told The Cumberland News that is time to have new "conversations" about a long-term "community-based" vision for the club.

Clibbens says United have recently made contact with the council to start the process.

It follows what the Blues have described as an "increasing problem" of maintaining Brunton Park, which currently has one of its stands closed ahead of £30,000 roof repairs.

Clibbens said the cost of maintaining the ageing stadium "isn't going to go away" and new discussions would be needed after previous attempts to find a new home for United under Project Blue Yonder, both at Kingmoor Park and Carlisle's Viaduct Estate, failed.

Clibbens said: "The circumstances that led the club to look at those remain, and are becoming even more focused.

"How you do it is the challenge we face. At League One and Two level, the costs go up all the time and the willingness of people to fund them go down all the time, because football at this level is not seen as a good risk to support.

"Institutionally it's very difficult to access ground development funds for professional clubs that have been available in the past.

"My personal view is that the nature of community clubs in provincial cities calls for a community-based approach to stadiums [which is] not just about football.

"In the past the club has attempted to do that and failed, but for me, that's got to be the focus of where we look."

Clibbens added: "We've made recent contact with the council to start that process. It's very early days, and we haven't sat down and talked about it, but we're going to have to, because we're on a floodplain.

"The ability for the club to survive a flood is improved, but the risk is always there, and it casts a shadow over the development of Brunton Park."

An initial attempt to find a new ground, launched in 2011, saw hopes of an enabling development at Kingmoor curtailed when a council report cast doubt on the need for the retail development that would have accompanied a 12,000-seater stadium.

That episode exposed tensions between club and council, with the Blues accusing the authority of a "short-term and pessimistic" attitude to their proposals, with Blues co-owner John Nixon accused in response of "rhetoric" and "sabre-rattling".

City council leader Colin Glover, though, insisted that relations between club and council had not broken down because of that period, and the authority would always welcome discussions on any new ideas the club may have, particularly with the community in mind.

He added: "We recognise that a League football club is an important part of the city - when the club wins on a Saturday there is a spring in people's step.

"I'm not aware of any immediate plans for a new stadium but we recognise that [Brunton Park] is an ageing facility that has also been flooded twice now.

"We might not be able to build the club a new stadium but we are able to provide support and advice. We want to work with all our partners and if we can have those conversations, and help each other, brilliant."

Clibbens, meanwhile, has admitted that work on United's Edinburgh Woollen Mill Stand, scheduled for next month, will include the removal of asbestos sheets from the stand's roof.

The stand has been closed since the start of the campaign, but the chief executive said he was confident fans had not been at any health risk from sitting in the stand previously.

He said: "The risk comes if the asbestos becomes dispersed. Obviously we can't do anything that puts any fans at risk, so part of this is taking steps to get rid of the roof before the dispersal of that. We've got a structural report, and we haven't seen any evidence that there's been dispersal.

"The stand roofs we've got, you see them all over. It's pretty standard construction, but they get old, and when they get old, if you have problems, you've got to address them."

Clibbens said the club's annual safety assessment had indicated that work on the roof - where corroded fixings have exposed holes in the roof - needed to be done now to avoid any risk of affecting supporter safety.