Agenda item

RESOLVED: 1)         That  officers be authorised to progress Option Three detailed in Section 3.3 of the report and the related Options One and Two, detailed in Section 5 of the report, to RIBA Stage Two to enable a full Business Case to be developed for presentation to Cabinet in due course.

2)            That Cabinet funding of £450k be allocated to the project from the ‘Invest to Save’ fund to enable work to be progressed to the stage set out in 6.1.1 of the report.

3)            That delegated authority be given to the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Corporate Governance Manager and Monitoring Officer to enter into a Framework Contract to carry out the Project

Reason for Decision

To enable the council to undertake more detailed planning and consideration of the business case and potential capital costs of relocating St James Swimming Pool to Lynnsport or another town centre location, and a rebuild of the Oasis Leisure Centre in Hunstanton.

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Councillor Ring presented a report which presented Cabinet with a compelling case for the council to invest in a major facilities renewal strategy for its leisure venues.

The Governance Manager reminded Members that it had long been recognised that physical activity played a key role in promoting health and wellbeing. However, for both adults and children, the borough’s levels of obesity/overweight were higher than the national average, whilst activity levels for both were lower than the national average. Moreover, there was significant health inequality within the borough, with life expectancy between the least deprived and most deprived areas being almost 7 years for men and 1.6 years for women. 

Given this challenging position, the council was working closely with Sport England on developing a plan for increasing physical activity levels – especially amongst those groups which were least active. The borough had been designated by Sport England as one of its 100 ‘Place Expansion’ areas. These were areas deemed to be in greatest need and which would benefit from additional Sport England funding. Swimming pools and leisure centres played a vital role in creating active and healthy communities, but they also taught children (and adults) to swim and provide a community ‘hub’ for local people.

The council operated three swimming pools in the Borough. St James in King’s Lynn, Oasis in Hunstanton and Downham Market Leisure Centre in Downham Market.

St James Swimming Pool opened in 1975 and Oasis Leisure Centre in 1984. Both of those facilities were now at the end of their economic life and both facilities had prohibitively high energy costs due to their design and required significant capital investment to keep them open and operating. Both pools were failing to deliver their important contribution to the council’s strategic goals, namely effective and efficient service delivery, tackling health inequality, reducing our carbon emissions, and promoting the area as a great place to live, work, visit and invest. The subsidy paid by the council to operate the council’s leisure facilities currently stood at £1.4m and was expected to increase.

Feasibility work had been conducted by Sport England and an external Leisure Consultant. This work concluded that the council should develop a capital investment plan to renew its swimming pools and leisure centres. This was an approach being adopted by many councils and would result in significant reductions in running costs, major increases in usage and income and improved health, social and economic outcomes.

The report outlined the options which had been explored and made recommendations to progress the preferred options to RIBA Stage 2.

In debating the proposals Cabinet supported the recommendations set out in the report in accordance with the Council’s Corporate Plan.

Councillor de Whalley asked that BREEAM be utilised in the design process to maximise the energy efficiency.  It was confirmed that maximum energy efficiency would be aimed for but it was too early at this stage to build into the design at this stage.

Cabinet did not go into exempt session to debate any detailed financial information at this stage.

RESOLVED:  1)         That officers be authorised to progress Option Three detailed in Section 3.3 of the report and the related Options One and Two, detailed in Section 5 of the report, to RIBA Stage Two to enable a full Business Case to be developed for presentation to Cabinet in due course.

2)            That Cabinet funding of £450k be allocated to the project from the ‘Invest to Save’ fund to enable work to be progressed to the stage set out in 6.1.1 of the report.

3)            That delegated authority be given to the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Corporate Governance Manager and Monitoring Officer to enter into a Framework Contract to carry out the Project

Reason for Decision

To enable the council to undertake more detailed planning and consideration of the business case and potential capital costs of relocating St James Swimming Pool to Lynnsport or another town centre location, and a rebuild of the Oasis Leisure Centre in Hunstanton.