THE council has been told ‘it needs to see the irony’ in building football pitches at Perdiswell after agreeing to move ahead with potentially multi-million-pound plans.

Worcester City Council is looking at a number of options to build new facilities at Perdiswell Leisure Centre including new five-a-side pitches, an all-weather pitch and a futsal arena.

Cllr Jabba Riaz said the city council “needed to see the irony” of it developing similar football facilities on land that was previously rejected as a new home for Worcester City FC.

“We’re developing a site now which is probably six or seven pitches possibly,” he said during a meeting of the council’s income generation subcommittee in the Guildhall on Wednesday (March 9).

“The amount of pressure that is going to add onto parking and the amount of visitors. It’s going to be constant use.

“The irony really needs to be seen by this council in terms of what we are considering here and what was being proposed.”

The city council’s planning committee rejected an application to build a new stadium for Worcester City FC at Perdiswell in 2018 – a decision that was later overturned on appeal by the government’s planning inspector.

The football club decided at the end of 2019 that it would no longer be looking to build a new stadium at Perdiswell and would instead be moving to the newly refurbished Claines Lane for the start of the 2020/21 season.

Cllr Andy Stafford had believed the refurbishment of the leisure centre’s five-a-side pitches was an “interim measure” but had now become another option for the site and had “muddied the waters” around its potential use as a futsal facility.

Refurbishing the deteriorating five-a-side pitches at Perdiswell was financed by using Freedom Leisure’s reserves and was done to help its recovery from several long closures forced by Covid-19 lockdowns.

The council said the pitches are “doing very well” and have started to generate an income.

A report from council officers said both schemes were still possible with an all-weather pitch dependent on a grant from the Football Foundation – which would also mean that any profit is reinvested back into the facility.

A new futsal facility could cost as much as £3.4 million according to current estimates.