A DEVELOPER has finally been found to build homes on the site of an eyesore former swimming pool after years of delays.

Worcester City Council said it has found a developer to build up to 50 homes on the former site of Sansome Walk swimming pool with councillors meeting next week to discuss contract plans.

Councillors will also decide whether to approve adding almost half a million pounds to the project’s budget.

If the additional money is approved, it means the cost of demolishing the building and preparing the land for development will have increased to £2.63 million.

The council’s preferred developer remains a secret for now with confidential papers not revealing who it would like to see build the homes.

A city council spokesman said the developer could not yet be revealed because the report contained commercially sensitive information but it would be revealed “in the next few weeks.”

The council awarded DSM Demolition the £1.3 million contract for demolishing the former swimming pool in Sansome Walk in Worcester at the end of last year.

Demolition has been hit by several delays since closing just over four years ago.

The council is now saying the building will be demolished by September 2021 but the homes will not be built until 2024.

The council’s policy and resources committee also meets next Monday (January 25) to vote on adding another £454,000 to the remedial work fund so the land can be prepared for building once it has been demolished.

The council had hoped to receive £550,000 from Homes England to help pay for the demolition of the building but that offer was withdrawn last year.

A grant of £750,000 has been secured by the council from the Local Government Association’s One Public Estate scheme to help with demolition – but some of it will now have to be paid back because the council’s preferred developer will not be building more than 50 homes on the site as previously desired.

The swimming pool closed in December 2016 following the huge multi-million-pound redevelopment of the city’s Perdiswell Leisure Centre.

Councillors agreed to move ahead with demolishing the building in January 2017 before deciding the land would be used for new homes in July that year.

The city council agreed to sell the site to Sanctuary Housing and YMCA in March 2018 and plans were revealed to convert the site into 22 two-bedroom shared-ownership homes, 76 accommodation units for 18-35 year-olds, a business hub and a communal enterprise space but those plans fell through.

The derelict former swimming pool was due to be demolished in early 2019 but work was delayed to due to a higher-than-expected amount of asbestos was found in the building and buried in the ground.

A number of surveys were carried out in 2017 to find out how much asbestos was in the building before the contract for the demolition work was put out to tender.

Additional surveys in September 2018 found more asbestos than was expected leading to further investigations.

Plans backed by the council in July 2019 said demolition should have started in February last year with an original completion date of October revealed in the committee papers.

The city council then said in February – before the Covid pandemic hit – that it hoped the building would be demolished “by the end of the year.”