The Football Association is expected to announce that it has a new backer for the Wembley Stadium project on Friday.

The board of German bank West Deutsche Landesbank is understood to have approved a loan of hundreds of millions of pounds for the project.

The FA had originally been given until Tuesday to come up with a financial package for the �715m scheme to build a new national stadium on the Wembley site.

But, with local elections taking place on Thursday, the FA will make an announcement on Friday instead.

The Government will then make a statement on the project next week.

Financing of the scheme was the major hurdle that the FA had faced, so the deal with West LB is a massive step forward for English football's governing body.

However the FA and their subsidiary company Wembley National Stadium Ltd still have to make sure that their plans comply with conditions drawn up by the Government.

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, said: "The Government will determine whether or not the FA's work on the project satisfies the conditions set out on 19 December in the light of advice received from Sport England, Patrick Carter's review team and from within Government.

"However, in line with the convention on announcements during local government elections, the Government will not be making any statement until after 2 May."

The four conditions laid down by Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell are:

• that the FA secures financing of the project
• that the FA show the construction deal with builders Multiplex represents value for money
• that WNSL provide a report by corporate troubleshooter David James into the Multiplex agreement to the National Audit Office. James had been critical of some of the details of awarding of the construction contract
• that WNSL bring in changes in corporate governance, ie make some changes to the way it is run