Agenda item

The Council welcomes engagement from members of the public. To speak at this meeting please register at least 3 working days before the date of the meeting via democracy@southkesteven.gov.uk.

Councillor Virginia Moran had an ‘Other Registrable Interest’ in item 4 – Request for a Financial Contribution, Deepings Leisure Centre.’ Therefore she would read out a statement in her capacity as Chairman of the CIC, and would leave the Council Chamber following the statement’s conclusion.

After being proposed and seconded, it was AGREED that Virginia Moran, Chairman of the Deepings Community Interest Company (CIC) be allowed to speak to the item on the agenda for up to 20 minutes.

Two Directors of the Deepings Leisure Centre Community Interest Company (CIC) provided their statement:

‘Good Afternoon and thank you for giving me the opportunity to present this request for funding towards the renovation and re-opening of The Deepings Leisure Centre and for your time this afternoon to give it your consideration. I have been an SKDC Councillor for Market & West Deeping for the past 5 years but today I am addressing you in my role as a Director of the Deepings Community Leisure Centre CIC. I have with me Martin Reilly who is the Director with responsibility for the refurbishment programme, Paul Smith Shelton, the Director with the responsibility for our illustrative cashflow and who is our liaison with organisations wishing to use the new facilities. Chris Davis is coordinating our grant applications, including the Commons Community Ownership Fund Bid, and the final Director is Ian Stygall, who is a commercial electrician and long-time Deepings resident.

Councillor Baxter will cover the history of the site when working through his presentation. This request is looking for this council's support to reinstate leisure facilities to thousands of residents in The Deepings and beyond, facilities that they have enjoyed for almost 50 years and which will bring parity with the other three towns of South Kesteven. Throughout all our previous battles to retain facilities we have had the unending support of residents and this has never wavered. The Deepings is truly the least supported area within SKDC and we have watched over the years as one service or facility after another has been taken away. We have no arts centre or large events venue, our community centre is run by volunteers, we now run our own immensely successful library (again with volunteers), we looked after ourselves during the pandemic with volunteers, we recently updated a little SKDC play park again with money raised by volunteers and so it goes on. We now wish to be given the means to run our leisure centre, again with volunteers on a not for profit basis.

I'd now like to comment on various aspects of the documents before you. Our Business Plan gives you an outline of the services we hope to provide, the repairs required and the funding sources for those repairs. I will say that to date (as recently as a couple of days ago) the support we have received from Lincolnshire County Council has been incredible and very much appreciated. At the closure and handing back of the centre to them by SKDC, they could have simply torn the building down and handed the land to the school; they didn't, nor did they want to. In addition to giving us the opportunity to buy the land and buildings they also offered us considerable financial support towards those repairs. Their stipulations were that the amount of that offer was kept confidential and we have done our utmost to ensure that was adhered to. Hence why we asked that the plan was kept on pink papers and we would be grateful if that confidentiality was adhered to by those attending today. LCC also stipulated that we employed a professional leisure company to run the centre and that we accommodate the school’s requirements for use of the sports hall. We were happy to comply with both as they were our intentions anyway. We are also grateful to Sir John Hayes, our local MP, for his consistent support.

The plan also includes our costs of renovation. These are dramatically different from those provided to SKDC in the past. There are several reasons for this. The first one is that the figures provided to SKDC were based on a formula which meant that each item of expenditure was based on the square meterage of the footprint of the building. This was patently flawed, so any comparison with those figures is a nonsense. We have provided written quotations from local suppliers which show exactly what the cost of each item is. The second reason our costings are so low is that we have the benefit of several of the companies doing the large items of work, such as the roof, electrical work and the new heating, solar and ventilation systems being done at cost. We also benefit from several professional services which are being provided free of charge, these include an architect, a solicitor and a barrister. Please don't think for one second that this will mean inferior quality of work, quite the reverse, these are local well-qualified people who want this centre open again, not just for their own benefit, but for their children and grandchildren's benefit and for the community as a whole. This is how Deepings people operate. SKDC Officers appear to have taken the view that because our prices are low that we won't be complying with building regulations, insurance or health and safety requirements. I don't know why they would think that, why would we not be providing the best possible facilities for ourselves and our families? There is also mention in the report that we will not be providing a full refurbishment. No room in the centre will remain untouched. They have also mentioned in meetings that we have no budget for exterior upgrading. That is correct. That doesn't mean that we won't intend to do it in the future. Frankly, nobody minds about the fact that the cladding is a bit rusty. What matters are the facilities inside and that is where we are concentrating our efforts.

I have provided details from our project management company which you will see covers all aspects of building control and health and safety.

We have also outlined the other professional leisure centre providers we are hoping to work with and presented our estimates of the income that the centre will generate. At the outset of this initiative, we didn't want to fall into the trap which a lot of community groups fall into which is enthusiastically over-estimating our income and we have based our figures on the very minimum amount of support that we would expect to achieve. Every single professional provider who has seen these figures has expressed the opinion that we have severely underestimated, particularly in respect of gym membership, and our recent public consultation backs up that opinion. We did this on purpose because we need to assure ourselves that we could run the centre effectively, and at a profit at the lowest take up. There is a strong reliance on swimming which is due to the fact that we are the only publicly accessible deep water 6 lane 25m pool for some considerable distance.

We have prepared an invitation to tender to all five of the companies who have expressed interest in running the centre for us. This will be issued as soon as we have decisions on funding from SKDC and LCC, and we will appoint them very shortly thereafter. All of the companies are already running successful leisure centres and will carry any financial shortfall that may occur during the first few months of opening. We are very fortunate in that, quite uniquely, we have six income streams that will immediately be forthcoming upon opening. The Anthem Trust, for use of the Sports Hall, The Deepings Swimming Club, who will immediately move back home. School swimming lessons and swim school, which will be forward booked as we approach opening, and advance booking for gym and swim memberships. Whilst building work is taking place, we will also be confirming evening or weekend sports hall usage from the many clubs and organisations who have contacted us expressing interest together with offering rental space in our studios to exercise providers and support services through our leisure provider.

The building itself will remain in the ownership of the CIC as a public asset and we will have monthly meetings with our leisure provider.

In the past, due to the agreement between SKDC and The Anthem Trust the Deepings Leisure Centre was unable to reach its full potential – it now can. The agreement gave the school the majority of pool use during the day in term time which resulted in a lack of public and club use. The residents of Deeping frequently bemoaned the fact that the pool would be empty for hours on end. The school simply didn't need the amount of hours it was allocated and, whilst the school often offered time back to SKDC, SKDC couldn't accept these hours as they were outside of published times or at short notice. We have met with the Trust on numerous occasions and they no longer require any pool time on a permanent basis, if they do need pool time then this would be booked on an ad hoc basis through the normal channels. They have asked for daytime use of between 38 and 40 weeks, of the sports hall for PE and examinations and we are happy to accommodate them, together with ad hoc usage for special events during the evening at a discounted rate. Dependent upon the result of this meeting we will be meeting them at the end of the month, hopefully with our prospective partner to finalise hours and costs. We will also be finalising our car park requirements, joint access to the site and the breakdown of any repair costs to that joint access.

We are very grateful for Martin Hill's letter earlier this week to you all and have discussed our exit strategy briefly with him at past meetings. In response to that, we have published our exit strategy and you should have that before you.

Finally on the Business Plan, I'd like to tell you where we are up to with funding sources. At present we require just short of £2m to complete all the works, however, this includes a contingency of almost half a million. The contingency is there to cover any items which we become aware of, such as the asbestos in the building, which is currently contained, but we have an estimate for removal should we decide that is the best course of action. Minor items such as re-lining our area of the car park is also included. We have today's request for £850k from this Council, LCC have indicated that they would be prepared to contribute and we have a Community Ownership bid in, currently for around £450k. We have been allocated a consultant by the COF who is there to assist us in completing our bid successfully; there are a couple of reports that the COF require but they are providing us with the funding required to obtain these reports. We have commitment from various local parish Councils, although we have seen very few of them at the moment. Those figures are before you; a lot of them are keeping their powder dry, shall we say, until they find out the result of this meeting, which is fair enough. They are also in precept negotiations at the moment. You will notice that one of the Parish Council’s is not within SKDC and is within Peterborough; they recognise that the Deepings Leisure Centre has benefits for the wider community. We also have plans for crowdfunding and business sponsorship which will be announced as soon as we have secured the decision today and Lincolnshire County Council’s decision. So, provided we receive all the funding listed we are covered for a full refurbishment as outlined.

Also within the papers is our Dear Councillor booklet. This was prepared prior to the decision not to pursue a new leisure centre. It was our way of letting Councillors at the time know how this was impacting residents as they had been denied a voice at various meetings, including one in Grantham where no-one was allowed to speak in the public session. I asked residents at the time to write to me outlining the impact the loss of leisure facilities would have and the booklet contains a selection from the enormous amount of replies I received.

There are some aspects of the officers’ report that I would like to comment on.

There is quite a lot of text about a subsidy; I’m not entirely sure why they want to call it a subsidy. Our barrister’s opinion disagrees with them, but to be honest, we don’t really care what you want to call it, whether it be a subsidy or a grant. It states in the papers that this Council has the power to provide these monies as a grant, so we don’t mind what you choose.

It states the Council should, quite rightly, balance the risks against the potential rewards. Almost no account of the potential rewards of providing a grant or a subsidy of this amount and for this purpose has been mentioned. Thousands of residents will receive enormous real mental and physical benefits from this proposal for years to come. Our mantra of providing facilities for all, especially those with mental and physical difficulties has simply not been acknowledged.

Great store has been placed in the SLC report. I think we are all aware that, particularly in business consultants tell you what you want to hear. I am convinced that if we (the CIC) had gone to SLC for a report in support of this proposal that they would have waxed lyrical for page after page about its benefits just as they did when this Council was looking at spending £10million on the leisure centre. If you tell a consultant (however obscurely) that you “have concerns about the viability of a project” they will provide you with the evidence to support those concerns.

Constant comparisons with LeisureSK have been made. Why are we being compared to a company which has failed for the entirety of its existence and continues to do so? A Company which officers are actively looking to close and replace. Why not compare us with any of the successful leisure centres that all of our proposed partners run? Spalding has recently been given £20m to build a new leisure centre – do you really believe that they would have been awarded this for them to create a money pit? Very many of the leisure centres around the country are run well and at a profit year in year out – please, I beg of you, allow the Deepings to be one of them.

Thank you.’

The Monitoring Officer reported, in relation to the Exit Strategy document, that Graham Thompson, who was the Chairman of the Deepings St. James United Charities had requested that his charity be removed from the exit strategy document. That decision was taken at their meeting on 10 January 2024.

Note:  Councillor Virginia Moran left the Council Chamber.