Nottingham City Council's leader says the authority has received some complaints about their pools being too cold after turning the temperature down to try and save on heating bills. David Mellen was updating members of the overview and scrutiny committee about the council's improvement plan on Wednesday (November 9).
The council recently avoided Government commissioners being sent in to run it following problems - including £40m being misspent and the collapse of Robin Hood Energy. An Improvement and Assurance Board (IAB) was instead given more powers in overseeing improvements being made at the council.
As part of this, Councillor David Mellen said last month that a list of 67 'requirements' has been presented which need to be fulfilled by the end of November, centred around areas including governance and working practices. Speaking at Wednesday's meeting, Councillor Mellen said this list had now been reduced to 31.
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But as well as internal improvements, Labour members of Nottingham City Council have repeatedly said that more Government funding is needed to help the authority battle rising inflation. Speaking about the impact of rising bills on the council, Councillor Mellen confirmed that the authority had recently turned down the temperature at the swimming pools it runs.
Nottingham City Council operates six leisure centres in locations such as Clifton and Bulwell, all of which have swimming pools. Councillor Mellen said: "I think fuel costs are having a varying effect, clearly when we do things like running swimming pools. We have slightly changed the temperature in the pools and we've received some people saying 'it's too cold in your pools'.
"The balance there is that we want people to use our facilities but we don't want to heat things more than we need to. Clearly there has been work in this building in changing the lighting throughout the building [Loxley House] over the last couple of years and I've been told it's saved 25% of the lighting cost."
In terms of the council's improvement plan, Councillor Mellen says good progress was being made ahead of the end of November deadline. After this has passed, Sir Tony Redmond, the chair of the IAB, will report to the Government in December.
Councillor Mellen said he then expects the Government to report back in mid-to-late January. Issues being worked on include the council recently receiving an "inadequate" rating from Ofsted in relation to children's services.
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