No reprieve for centres (From This Is Wiltshire)

No reprieve for centres

10:05am Thursday 21st December 2006

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Leisure centre supporters hoping for a district council U-turn on the decision to close three centres were let down last week when councillors refused to back down.

On November 23 North Wiltshire District Council agreed to a recommendation by North Wiltshire Leisure Ltd to close the leisure centres in Cricklade, Wootton Basset and Calne.

After the scrutiny committee asked councillors to reconsider their decision, the members of the executive stood by their guns and backed plans to close the leisure centres at a meeting last Thursday.

Gary Walker, one of the leaders of a campaign to save Cricklade Leisure Centre in Stones Lane, is unhappy but not surprised by the outcome.

He said: "It was highly unlikely that the council would go back on its decision to recommend closing the centres.

"Our focus now is on saving our centre for the community and we are all working really hard to make that happen."

During the meeting councillors commended the work being done by community groups. But they reminded them that business plans for any organisations wishing to take on the running of the leisure centres should be produced by the end of January.

District councillor Diane Moore said the decision was right. "It was the logical thing to do with the information available to us."

North Wiltshire MP James Gray has said he was encouraged by the emergency debate on the leisure crisis at Westminster.

David Lammy, Minister for Culture, called on North Wiltshire District Council to undertake a full review of its sport provision during the debate last Wednesday. He said the council should continue dialogue with Sport England to see if it could provide some form of funding or professional expertise. Government targets state people should be within 20 minutes of a sport centre by 2008.

Mr Gray said: "A number of issues have brought about a huge amount of public outrage and concern, but none of those have come close to the level of outrage I have experienced over the centres in the last couple of weeks.

"One half of my constituency could have three functioning leisure centres, while the other half is having its closed. What less equality could there be than that?"

Following the debate, Mr Gray said: "It gave me some encouragement, especially about Sport England funding."

Mr Gray said he thought the council should enter into a partnership with a private provider, such as DC Leisure, in West Wiltshire.

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