WORK to turn a former city swimming pool into housing which has already been hit by years of delays is now not expected to be finished until at least 2025.

Worcester City Council has been forced to push back the time it expects the redevelopment of Sansome Walk Swimming Pool to be finished to March 2025 in another setback for the much-delayed plan to build new houses and flats on the site.

With the former pool now demolished, negotiations continue between the city council and Sanctuary Housing over the share of the cost as the site is readied for work to finally begin.

The council said the work to make the site suitable to build housing has been “agreed in principle” but work is set to be delayed until at least autumn this year and has pushed back its ‘due date’ to March 2025 when it expects the new flats and houses to be finished.

The deadline on an agreement is fast approaching with talks needing to be resolved by the end of June when contracts confirming the deal between the city council and Sanctuary Housing have to be signed so building can start.

A spokesperson for Sanctuary said: “The site remains in the ownership of Worcester City Council and we are continuing commercial negotiations to complete the purchase of the site so redevelopment can begin. 

“Given that negotiations are ongoing, it would not be appropriate for us to make any further comment at the present time.”

The crumbling Sansome Walk Swimming Pool closed after 46 years in 2016 with the opening of the multi-million-pound Perdiswell Leisure Centre and having seen the asbestos-ridden building becoming a site of vandalism and anti-social behaviour, it was eventually demolished in 2021 at an estimated cost of £2.64 million after years of setbacks and delays.

The council agreed to move ahead with demolishing the building in January 2017 before deciding the land would be used for new homes later that summer.

The city council had then agreed to sell the site to Sanctuary Housing and YMCA in March 2018 and plans were revealed to convert the site into 22 two-bedroom shared-ownership homes, 76 accommodation units for 18-to-35-year-olds, and a business and enterprise hub.

But the transformation of the eyesore former swimming pool has been plagued by long delays, and asbestos, with the council finding more of the harmful material in the building than it expected in 2017 and 2018 which created another stumbling block in front of the plan to have the building demolished in early 2019.

It was then said that demolition would start in February 2020 with the council expecting the work to have been finished by the end of the year.