WORCESTER’S dream of a new eight-lane swimming pool is all but dead in the water - after the city’s Labour leadership revealed it wants to pull out.

Cash-strapped bosses say “unprecedented” funding cuts means it can no longer afford to pursue plans for a top class, competition standard facility at Perdiswell.

Your Worcester News can also reveal how Labour wants to increase council tax by 1.99 per cent next April, the first rise in four years.

The cabinet wants to crack on with a scaled-down pool, featuring just six lanes and without the need to take out a hefty 40-year loan.

The move, which is subject to cabinet approval as part of the budget setting process, is a bitter blow to swimmers in the city.

The eight-lane pool would cost £13.5m, but even taking into account a huge loan has an existing £5.2m funding gap.

Until now the only way of bridging some of that gap is a £2m bid to Sport England.

In recent months approaches were made to the University of Worcester and Worcester College of Technology about funding some of the gap, but cash was not forthcoming.

The likes of Worcestershire County Council and the NHS were also mentioned as possible helpers, but were never considered realistic ones.

But the stance has been attacked by the opposition Tory group, which came up with the original project and said it “smacks of a lack of ambition”.

Councillor Richard Boorn, cabinet member for finance, said: “The severity of cuts in our funding from Government is the most extreme we have ever had to cope with.

“We are looking at reduction of over 50 per cent by 2018/19 – and we may learn in December that the cuts are even deeper.

“I have asked our officers to prepare a realistic plan to deal with these unprecedented challenges and that means we have to consider every option available to us - including reigning in our ambitions for a new eight-lane swimming pool.”

The council is drawing up plans to cut around £3.5m from spending by 2019 to balance the books.

Labour says a six-lane pool, which could cost £10.7m, will only get the nod if it can secure a lucrative deal with a supermarket to be built on the same site at Perdiswell.

Councillor Marc Bayliss, Tory group deputy leader, said: “It smacks of a lack of ambition to me and feels like the thin end of a wedge - what will they say next, we can’t have a new pool altogether?

“To tie it in with a council tax increase is even worse.

"It's not about bankrupting the city. Worcester has 100,000 people living here, it's an historic place and deserves better."

A 1.99 per cent council tax increase would add just £2.88 per year to the average band D property, because the city council controls 11 per cent of the overall bill.

At the same time, that small increase is worth £100,000 to city council coffers.

The Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) has pencilled in rises of the same rate for the next four years.

It is subject to consultation and a vote at full council next February as part of the 2014/15 budget.

The cabinet is meeting next Tuesday to discuss the proposals.

* More on this story will follow in the Worcester News and on the website throughout the week.