THE headlines on the Worcester Evening News of July 8, 1971, read: “Big plan for Perdiswell” and the accompanying story went on to reveal that three city council committees were looking at a £56,000 plan to lay out 80 acres of the former Second World War airfield for “a wide range of intensive sports uses”.

The idea, innovative at the time, was to provide dual-use facilities to be shared by the public and the yet to be built new secondary school at Astwood Farm. The scheme envisaged a £30,000 pavilion, a £6,000 all weather surface, a £5,500 coach and car park for 160 vehicles, plus facilities for model aircraft flying and, rather bizarrely, whippet racing. The last named presumably not related to the school, unless a new subject was being added to the Fourth Year curriculum. Leading to O-levels in maths, geography and betting.

As ever the problem was cost, especially as £45,000 of the scheme was earmarked to come from the Education Committee’s budget for its new school and that was some way down the line.

However all of a sudden things changed gear and just over three years later, towards the end of 1974, there was talk of  a “Mini White City for Worcester” and the project had become a £600,000 sports complex and stadium.

READ MORE: The man behind the name, Blessed Edward Oldcorne

In his reporting of the proposal colleague Mike Grundy wrote: “The scheme may also incorporate a new home for Worcester City Football Club to enable it to sell up its extremely valuable St George’s Lane ground, which is ripe for housing development.

"A sale price for this site could be as much as £250,000 which would certainly be big enough for the club to pay off all its accumulated debts and provide itself with a new ground at Perdiswell.”

But, as has been well documented ever since, that never happened.

By the time we got to 1980, the build was being called a £1 million sports centre project and in January  of that year it was voted forward by the council 26-8 despite a sharp split in the controlling Conservative group, with leading figures like David Wright against it (money better spent elsewhere) and others such as Bob Bullock in favour.

Mayor Syd Smith said that after pedestrianisation of High Street this was the one project Worcester people most wanted.

And so on the weekend of October 17-18, 1981 it was the new mayor Mike Layland who officially opened Perdiswell Sports Centre with two days of free admission to let the public have a look at the wide range of facilities on offer.

In January 2017 there was a massive £10 million upgrade to what had become known as Perdiswell Leisure Centre. The new facilities, which included a new eight-lane 25m swimming pool, a teaching pool with a moveable floor, gym, several fitness studios and a sports hall, were opened by Droitwich’s Paralympian silver medallist Rebecca Redfern. It was a long way from 1971.