THE first steps are being taken toward possibly bringing a swimming pool back to Minehead.

A provisional plan to locate the pool in Irnham Road on the site of the current Minehead Town Football Clubhouse was discussed at the town council's Amenities and General Purposes committee on Monday night.

Minehead Town Council has been in talks with Naomi Griffith of Watchet's Onion Collective, and at the meeting she gave an outline of the first steps which would need to be taken if the project is get off the ground.

"This is something we have been working on the last few months and we have already had a very reassuring visit to the pool at Crewkerne which is run by a charitable company," Mrs Griffith said.

"There is no doubt this project will be very hard to do but there are examples where it has worked."

Asked by Cllr Roger Thomas about costs Mrs Griffith said the preliminary research suggests building the pool would cost in excess of £3 million and annual running costs of around £500,000.

She outlined that to move the project forward a business plan needs to be developed, initial work carried out by an architect and surveyors to consider the suitability of the site, which would cost roughly £40,000.

"There needs to be a thorough consultation with the local community and visitors as well ideally," Mrs Griffith said.

"We need to find out what sort of facilities would they be prepared to use, how often and how much they would be willing to pay. In this type of project getting a consultation right at the beginning can be really important.

"The last thing we want is to spend all this money and build a pool that is not right, and obviously we need to be realistic and assess whether we can make it work financially as well."

Potential funding pots outlined at the meeting included Sport England, Hinkley Community Impact Mitigation funding and Power to Change as well as looking at match funding and crowdfunding options.

The matter will now go to the Town Council's finance committee in July.

Minehead has not had a swimming pool since Aquasplash closed in 2007, but Mayor Jean Parbrook said that the Onion Collective had a good track record for getting funding and this was a positive start to this new project.

All of this may be possible because the football club is looking to downsize, and further progress has been made on this front, the council heard.

Louise Crossman Architects had drawn up outline plans for the new clubhouse which will go where the current tea shack.

Town Clerk Sue Sanders said there had been a positive meeting with Colin Johnson from Somerset Activity and Sports Partnership, and the plan is to seek funding to get the tennis courts upgraded, the basketball court redeveloped as a multi-use games area, the floodlights replaced with more modern LED equivalents as well as the new clubhouse itself.

There will be a consultation on the plans for the new football facilities held at the current clubhouse on Thursday, June 23 between 3pm and 8pm.