Gateshead's councillor for culture, sport and leisure has welcomed a fund for at-risk leisure centres across the UK but says that without austerity, this "predicament" would not exist.
There have been months of outrage after the proposed closures of Gateshead Leisure Centre on Alexandra Road and Birtley Swimming Centre due to council cuts, with community members saying closures would be "devastating". Sports clubs, MPs and council leaders have all called for "something to be done" to save the centres, and it looks as if plans from the Government announced last Wednesday offer a shred of hope - as does a plan to to save the Alexandra Road site which should be ready in the coming weeks.
However, Angela Douglas, councillor for Bridges Ward, told ChronicleLive after a full meeting of Gateshead Council on Thursday afternoon that it is still too early to say if the leisure centres will be saved. The planned closures of both centres are currently on pause to allow for extra public consultation and a possible community asset transfer.
Read more: £63m fund to save swimming pools could be 'lifeline' for Gateshead leisure centres
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt outlined plans in his Spring Budget on March 15 to offer a one-year £63m fund for swimming pools across England aimed at helping struggling facilities with spiralling energy bills and maintenance costs. And there is cautious optimism that this fund could eliminate the need for the council budget cuts that would lead to the two centres closing.
Following the budget, a Gateshead Council spokesperson said: "The £63m for leisure centres with pools, which was announced today ahead of Wednesday's Spring Budget, may be a welcome lifeline. However, until the full detail of the funding is announced we can not assess if this will save our leisure centres from potential closure."
£63m may sound like a lot, but there are more than 2,000 public leisure centres in England, with more than 800 of those having pools, all vying for the funding. £23m of that fund will go towards costs, with the remaining £40m will be put towards long-term decarbonisation and energy efficiency schemes at leisure centres.
Cllr Douglas told ChronicleLive that there are no new updates at this stage on how the funding could help Gateshead, but the body is still working closely with groups who are campaigning to keep the two centres open. She said: "It breaks down to about £70,000 for each pool from my reading across England, and that's more to do with decarbonisations costs or putting things like new heating in, it's not an ongoing revenue stream.
"What we really needed was for the Government to say there's some or all of the money that they have taken out of the £179m [the amount Gateshead Council has had to take out of its budget since 2011] and if we got some or all of that back and we wouldn't be in this predicament."
ChronicleLive recently joined forces with community campaigners, sports clubs and MPs and the council to call for the Government to step in with new funding to save Gateshead's Leisure centres. To read more about our campaign to save the leisure centres, click here.
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