Mayor Damien Egan has invited Millwall Football Club and Renewal to meet and “get both sides talking.”

But Millwall said concerns around the compulsory purchase order (CPO), which could see them leave the borough, “hangs over us like a sword of Damocles.”

Lewisham Council owns the freehold of the stadium The Den, and it is leased to Millwall Football Club.

Plans to seize the club’s leasehold land around the stadium were dropped in January last year after widespread outcry and negative publicity.

In a tweet, Mr Egan said: “Just signed letters inviting representatives of Millwall and Renewal to meet me in the Town Hall. I will not support a development that doesn’t have the support of our community and I want to protect Millwall’s future in Lewisham. Now it’s time to get both sides talking.”

Millwall chief executive Steve Kavanagh said the club was interested in a constructive meeting with both parties, and that a “new relationship” could exist between the club and the council if the council terminated the conditional land sale agreement with Renewal.

“For as long as the conditional land sale agreement remains in place by which the freeholds of the Millwall land are pledged by Lewisham Council to Renewal, the CPO blight hangs over us like a sword of Damocles. Lewisham Council can now terminate that agreement. We call upon them to do so. That would be an excellent demonstration of the new relationship that should exist between local council and its football club.”

Mr Kavanagh said the club was wary of Renewal’s position.

“There must be an agenda and a clear objective for the meeting and we need to be sure that Renewal have a genuinely open mind and a change of attitude. Without this, Renewal would merely be paying lip service as a means to ultimately acquiring the Millwall land via compulsory purchase order,” he told the News Shopper.

“Bear in mind that Renewal has already publicly said that it will not work with Millwall Football Club and it will not undertake any development of the New Bermondsey site unless it is given ownership of the Millwall land.”

Mr Kavanagh asked Mr Egan to “put his words into action” by revisiting the scheme.

He said: “Damien Egan confirmed last year that he opposed the use of CPOs as well as the sale of council owned land to a private property developer. He also stated that he wished to revisit the whole New Bermondsey scheme. We are waiting to see him put his words into action.”