Express & Star

Tesco puts site of cancelled Wolverhampton superstore up for sale

Tesco is putting its Royal Hospital site in Wolverhampton up for sale in a bid to raise millions of pounds to prop up its ailing balance sheet.

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The former hospital site is one of six around the country Tesco is aiming to sell.

Another is the 2.26 acres of land beside its existing superstore in Willenhall, next to the Keyway Retail Park.

The grocer, struggling with falling profits and repercussions of a £263 million accounting scandal, has appointed property agency Savills to handle the sale of the sites, which also include the Monaco House Complex in Birmingham and others in Leeds city centre, Burton-on-Trent and Doncaster.

The 10-acre Royal site had been lined up for a £65m superstore redevelopment until the crisis-hit stores group pulled the plug on a string of future developments earlier this year.

New chief executive Dave Lewis has slashed Tesco's plans for new stores. The company will open just 170,000 sq ft of shop space this year, less than a fifth of the area budget rival Aldi aims to expand into as part of its own growth plans.

The former Royal Hospital site

Tesco sees selling off 'non-core land' like the Wolverhampton site as a way of raising much-needed funds at the same time as it has pulled 49 development plans and announced the closure of 43 stores nationwide – three in the Black Country.

Despite its announcement in January that its was cancelling the Wolverhampton development, Tesco has continued to work on the site to make it more attractive to prospective developers and new owners.

This includes its plans to demolish the former New Cleveland Club in All Saints, along with its adjoining cafe and ex-pub the Newmarket Hotel, on the corner of Cleveland Road and Hospital Street opposite the old Royal Hospital site where the store itself would have been built.

The ill-fated store scheme took more than a decade to get off the ground and Tesco has been locked in talks with Wolverhampton City Council over finding an alternative use for the Royal Hospital site since it pulled out of the supermarket plan.

Tesco is not commenting on its latest move, but in January Dave Lewis said: "I am very aware of the importance of the site to the area and I am determined that we will work closely with the council to find the right solution for the local community."

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