WORK on a new 98-bed apartment building in the city centre can now start after councillors agreed to a plan which allows demolition can start.

The six-storey apartment block opposite St Martin’s Gate car park was approved by Worcester City Council in principle in July 2016 and was signed off in January last year but some conditions prevented demolition from starting.

Worcester Developments Ltd, the company behind the plan, had requested some of the conditions in the original planning permission be removed and amended to allow for the demolition of the existing builds, essential archaeological work and letting contracts to be compiled properly.

At a meeting of the council’s planning committee on Thursday (March 21), Alan Coleman, head of development planning at the city council, said the conditions needed to be changed so demolition could take place before archaeological work was carried out.

Mr Coleman said the developer would otherwise be in a “circular situation” where the conditions would not be cleared because the archaeological work or development could not take place without the other.

Mr Coleman said the council’s planning department wanted to keep the condition which meant a contract for development had to be made before demolition took place so the council could keep control over future work.

Under the current planning permission, Worcester Developments Ltd - which plans to sell the land to a housing developer once demolition has taken place – is under instruction to have a proper contract in place before any buildings are knocked down.

Approval of the plan meant a number of single-storey buildings currently used for car valeting and repairs would be demolished to make way for the new flats.

Worcester Developments Ltd had also asked for a condition to be deleted which meant a building must be erected as soon as demolition work has finished but a compromise between the developer and city council planners put a January 2021 deadline for work to begin.

If work did not begin by January 2021 then the application would expire.

Several alterations to other conditions, which have now been approved, make the process of demolition and later contract work run smoother.

The 98-bed apartment block – which includes 59 car parking spaces and 188 cycle spaces – would neighbour the new development planned for the former Granary building next to Asda in Lowesmoor.

The proposed apartment block is part of the Lowesmoor Conservation Area and is labelled as archaeologically sensitive in the South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP) but the buildings marked for demolition are not seen to be historically or architecturally significant.