THE heads of two councils will meet to discuss the ‘next steps’ over the future of Sixways under new Warriors owners Atlas following a plea by the city’s mayor to protect the land.
Tentative talks have been held between Worcester City Council managing director David Blake and Wychavon District Council chief executive Vic Allison over the future of the Sixways site on the edge of Worcester – including an idea floated by the city’s mayor for Wychavon to flex its compulsory purchase powers to seize the land.
Both councils have maintained that “further discussions” would be needed before anything was agreed.
Worcester Warriors went into administration last September but was bought in February by a consortium led by former chief executive Jim O’Toole and former player James Sandford.
Government guidance says compulsory purchasing should be used only as a “last resort” and attempts to make a deal over the sale of the land would first have to be exhausted.
The same guidance also says the council would be liable to pay compensation to the owners of the land who “should be left neither better nor worse off as a result of the land being acquired.”
Cllr Gregson said he believed that “safeguarding the future of the site [was] of paramount importance” and council bosses in Worcester should ask their counterparts at Wychavon to consider using compulsory purchase powers to make the future of Sixways “clear and permanent.”
A separate call made by former mayor and Warriors fan Cllr Stephen Hodgson at the same meeting asked for the council to write to Mr O’Toole to ensure that Atlas prioritised a “Sixways-based Worcester rugby team in its future plans” and asked the owners to take “all reasonable action” to secure the highest place possible for Warriors in the rugby pyramid.
Atlas director Jim O’Toole has also been invited to speak to councillors at the end of May to “explain the situation [he] inherited and how [the consortium’s] plans to bring Warriors back to the top tiers of English has evolved over the last few months.”
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