AN ABANDONED swimming pool in the city has become a haven for anti-social behaviour, according to one source.

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 - but in the meantime it has become a "magnet" for anti-social behaviour, involving young people drinking and taking drugs by trespassing on the secure site.

City councillor Joy Squires, for the Arboretum ward, said: "I've reported instances of anti-social behaviour in the past to both the police and city council, who've worked with young people in the area to try and minimise such anti-social behaviour from happening.

"It's always difficult when you have a site like this boarded up as it tends to be a bit of a magnet, but we are hopeful to start to demolish the site this November."

A Worcester City Council spokesman said: “A security company is on site 24-hours-a-day at the former Sansome Walk swimming pool site.

"The company have reported no issues with regard to the site being used as a ‘drugs den and out-of-hours drinking place’.”

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 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.