THE BUILDING which housed the county’s school library service looks set to be demolished and replaced with nine new homes.

The planning application, which is will be discussed by Worcester City Council’s planning committee this week, would see the county’s school library service building in Sherwood Lane knocked down and replaced with eight homes and a bungalow.

The homes would be built at the northern part of the site closest to Sherwood Lane with the rest of the site left as green space.

The site would also make use of the existing entrance from Sherwood Lane onto the former library service building as a way of accessing the new homes.

The larger homes would come with a garage in addition to off-road car parking spaces. Four of the three-bedroom semi-detached homes would also be provided with off-road car parking spaces.

The plan has raised a number of objections from neighbours – largely over the height of the new homes as well as loss of privacy and an increase in traffic and car-parking.

A report by the council’s planning officers, to be discussed by the city council’s planning committee on Thursday (April 18), recommends the homes are approved.

The two-storey homes would be set back behind the street-facing bungalow which the planning officer’s report said would not be harmful or out of character with the rest of the area.

It also said concerns by neighbours over the density of the homes within the site had been taken into account but the site had six fewer homes than it had been allocated in the South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP).

Neighbours had also raised concerns about badgers in the area and an assessment found a badger sett to the south-east corner of the site - to be used as green amenity space.

Subsequent assessments found the badger sett to be a ‘subsidiary’ or smaller sett and the developer has been told to take care when working and planting trees around the area.

No objections were raised by the city council’s landscape and biodiversity adviser or Worcestershire Wildlife Trust.