Save Our Sports Centres (From This Is Wiltshire)

Save Our Sports Centres

10:36am Thursday 30th November 2006

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£40,000 a month will be spent to keep three pools standing idle as the Gazette launches a campaign to keep them open for our communities.

COUNCIL bosses are planning to spend £40,000 of taxpayers' cash a month on keeping three swimming pools closed while the people of North Wiltshire fight to keep them open.

Today the Gazette is launching a campaign calling on North Wiltshire District Council to keep leisure centres at Calne, Cricklade and Wootton Bassett open until a new partner can be found to run them.

Talks are set to take place next week between district and Wiltshire County Council officers. They will try to work out a deal for the centres to be run by secondary schools in Wootton Bassett and Calne.

The move comes after the district council's Liberal Democrat-controlled executive committee voted to close the three centres.

It had been asked by the cash-strapped North Wilts Leisure Ltd, the trust set up by the council to run the centres, to axe them because it is facing financial meltdown. More than 300 members of staff have been told they could lose their jobs and many more at other centres may have to re-apply for theirs.

Conservatives on the council forced the executive to agree to keep the centres in a state of readiness if they closed.

This will mean the pools being kept full and boilers switched on. Staff and campaigners fear the centres' plant is so old and poorly maintained it will not be able to be restarted again if it is switched off completely.

Protesters in all three towns are calling on the council to keep running the centres until a new partner is found.

Jill Martin, a member of Calne Area Initiative for an Active Community, is appalled at the money being wasted on keep the pool and sport centre idle.

She said: "Having a number of community groups babysitting the centre would be a far better alternative than closing it down."

Michael Ancram, MP for the Devizes constituency, which includes Calne, said he is very concerned about the closures.

He said: "This is a retrograde step. I have written to the district council for a full report and to ask them to reconsider."

Meanwhile Calne town councillor Martin West has resigned from the Liberal Democrats over the decision.

Coun West, 46, a councillor for Priestly ward said: "I cannot walk through the street with my head held high after what my party has done to the people of Calne.''

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