Delay on building new homes on site of old Chelmsford Riverside swimming pool explained

Riverside Leisure Centre reopened with a huge refurbishment in 2019
-Credit: (Image: Ricci Fothergill/RMC)


Chelmsford Council has defended the time it has taken to develop a former Essex swimming pool - citing flood risks and Covid. It says work has been carried out in setting the groundwork for a sale of the old pool site at Riverside leisure site in Chelmsford with planning permission the council heard could raise as much as £5m.

The Riverside Ice and Leisure Centre was redeveloped between 2017 and 2019 to provide improved replacement facilities. As part of these proposals the old pool site was included in Chelmsford's local plan for residential development of around 125 new homes between 2030 and 2035.

Tory councillor Julia Jeapes said; "When we were finishing Riverside that site was estimated to be in the range of about £5million worth of of real estate which would have filled the Gap that we now have at £4m in the current budget. Plus of course if you'd have built the housing that housing would have reduced the amount of debt that you were incurring because you haven't got affordable housing. It just seems to me we've taken an awfully long time - over five years - to get anything like progress on it."

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Councillor Lynne Foster, deputy leader of Chelmsford City Council said: "The value of the development site is you know much enhanced by securing planning permission and the likelihood of obtaining a suitable consent is increased with the old pool site allocated for development in the local plan

"It might look as though nothing's happening but a vast amount has actually been done. But there are huge development constraints on that site. The main issue is flooding and the environment agency has changed their requirements.

"The environment agency are now modeling to reflect one in 30-year flood events and additional constraints include the adjacent conservation area massing and viability- so how high we can go and then viability of the site.

"But I do assure you they are being worked through assiduously and that a couple of iterations have been drawn up. And it's intended that the land will be marketed for sale once planning consent has been achieved."

Council leader Stephen Robinson said costs of construction have increased in the past four years hitting the viability of construction. He said: "The whole world has changed. Building costs have gone through the roof and it's an already-developed site and already-developed sites - brownfield sites - are notoriously difficult to develop.

"However we have been looking at a range of options as to what might be possible and we'll be coming forward with a planning application before too long hopefully.

"But it's very frustrating that the economic situation over the last four years has made a lot of building projects much more challenging than they they were with all the assumptions we used to make before Covid."