DETAILS have begun to emerge of a £30m housing and leisure scheme for Redcar - including a new £2.5m swimming pool.

Developers Persimmon Homes - the chosen partners of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council - vowed the swimming pool at Coatham Enclosure would be 'a substantial size' and could be part of a larger leisure complex.

As well as building 250 properties of various sizes on the 35-acre site, Persimmon Homes would also commit to helping to revitalise the boating lake, the Mungle Jungle Children's Activity Centre and the Redcar Bowl.

News of the swimming pool has been welcomed by campaign group Grasp (Get Redcar A Swimming Pool), which has been fighting for a new pool since structural problems closed the old one in 1997.

The town's MP Vera Baird is chairman of Grasp. She said: "This news is tribute to people power and Tees pride."

The price of buying one of the 250 planned new homes, which will include apartments as well as houses, has not been revealed but a Persimmon Homes spokesman insisted they would be in line with other property prices in the town. The scheme is expected to attract up to £30m of private investment.

Tees Valley Leisure, the company which currently runs various leisure services on behalf of the council, is expected to be in talks with Persimmon Homes in the coming weeks.

A planning application for what has been described as an 'urban village' will be filed in the next six months and, if permission is received, building work could start in one year. The swimming pool would be built in the first stage of development.

"This an exciting opportunity for the area and we are looking forward to working with the local council on this landmark development," said Jeff Fairburn, managing Director of Persimmon Homes North East.

Council leader Dave Walsh said the new Redcar swimming pool would not affect the campaign for a new or upgraded pool in neighbouring Guisborough.

He said: "A feasibility study being set up in Guisborough would naturally take all things into consideration and we would look at it when it is completed.

"What we've had in Redcar is a community whose swimming pool has had to be closed. Once this is sorted out our next priority has to be Guisborough."

Coatham Enclosure was developed as a leisure centre in the 1920s and 1930s but now only the boating lake survives.