THE council is searching for a developer to build new homes on the site of a former city centre swimming pool.

Worcester City Council has already agreed to demolish the city’s eyesore Sansome Walk swimming pool and is now looking for a developer to build new homes on the land.

The council has asked city-based consultants Fisher German to put the site on the market with hopes to have found a partner by the end of the year allowing work to start in 2022.

The derelict former swimming pool, which closed in December 2016, was supposed to have been demolished in early 2019 but work was delayed when higher-than-expected amounts of asbestos was found in the building and buried in the ground.

The council said last summer that demolition work would hopefully start in February and last around eight and a half months until October. A revised deadline by council bosses said the swimming pool would be demolished “by the end of the year.”

Richard Tomlinson from Fisher German said: “This is an exciting instruction for Fisher German and is a project we have been working on with Worcester City Council for some time now.

“Sites such as this located so close to the city centre do not come to market often, therefore the site presents a fantastic opportunity to create a unique and high-quality development close to the city centre.

“As a result, we are expecting to receive a high level of interest from the market.”

The cost of demolishing the former swimming pool has risen to at least £2.2 million in recent years.

Councillors approved spending an extra £832,000 on demolishing the building a year ago with the money going alongside the £750,000 the city council has already received from the government to support the work.

The city council has been in discussions with Homes England - which has access to around 40 approved developers - about potentially building houses on the site of the former swimming pool and whether it could offer any money to support making the site safe and ready for development.

To access grant money from Homes England, the development would need to be of at least 50 homes.

Even more money would be needed to make the site safe and ready for development - but even an estimate of that cost has yet to have been revealed.

It has also been proposed by the council that the scheme would be "over and above" in terms of environmental sustainability - particularly with the council declaring a climate emergency and committing to go carbon neutral by 2030.