Councillor Andrew Meads is an independent councillor representing the Calverton ward on Gedling Borough Council. Here he voices his concerns about the council’s latest plans to create a new leisure centre in Carlton…
This must be a very worrying time for bowling club members, and casual players.
To give some personal background, in my day job I’ve worked on around 40 new leisure centres over the last 30 years. That experience has given me many concerns about the Carlton Active project.
I believe the Carlton Active project should not go ahead in its planned form, it should be on a new site in Carlton or Netherfield, adjacent to the more modern parts of Gedling’s road network, but every time I raise my concerns about lack of parking, inflated income, or massively over ambitious hire fees for the community venue I’m told by that it must go ahead and we’ve got to trust the consultants.
All the leisure centres I’ve worked on have been consultant led, and over budget and delayed.
Looking at the latest drawings there’s around 50 less parking spaces than Carlton Forum, but that’s got to be shared with the football club and allow for increases in gym users, swimming users, new traffic for the soft play and the community venue (which in itself would need around 60-80 parking spaces).
The new building would have to open two hours earlier than the existing Richard Herrod centre to allow users to access the gym from 6am, meaning the traffic around the Foxhill Road area will greatly increase, and from much earlier in the day through too late at night, causing a huge inconvenience and nuisance to all the local residents.
The newest leisure centre close by, at Bingham, has almost double the parking spaces of the proposed Carlton Active but without the soft play, the community venue, and a smaller gym. Despite this, the car park at Bingham is regularly full through early in a morning, to late at night.
Then there’s no seating for swimming competitions – just a viewing gallery, so we are spending £30 million on a new leisure centre with an eight-lane pool which won’t allow local, or county-wide galas, or with the parking to cope; to me that seems so short sighted. Other leisure centres (like at Bingham) that cost a lot less have this provision.
Going to a new larger site would solve all these problems, as well as providing easier transport routes to the leisure centre. When I have raised this, I’ve been told we as a council can’t afford it. The slight additional cost would more than pay for itself in a very short time, never mind over the projected 50-year lifespan of the building.
If the consultants had investigated swimming locally, they would have found the whole county only has one 50M pool, at Harvey Hadden. This lack of provision in the county causes club galas to be held at venues out of the county, at Sheffield for example. If the new leisure was built on a new site in Carlton or Netherfield a 50M pool could be included, which would allow double the number of school sessions, as well as county and regional galas, generating huge additional income, as well as making Carlton Active a regional hub for sports, leisure and health.
Moving Carlton Active to a new site would leave Richard Herrod standing and I’m sure the staff could be accommodated at the new leisure centre once it was built, avoiding making them all redundant. It would also allow the indoor bowls club to run Richard Herrod themselves.
But the big question for me is funding. In a few months’ time we will find out if the borough will be split in half under LGR, this will mean that expected Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) won’t be able to be used towards this project.
Regarding the CIL, I’ve raised my concerns that I dont think the CIL report presented to the cabinet last year was done to the council’s own scoring methodology. No proof was requested for matched funding on the other projects put forward, the matched funding was there, and this would have dramatically changed the scoring which would have shown Carlton Active coming out fourth and not first. I’ve asked if it is going to be redone, but the answer is that it can’t be because cabinet has approved it now.
The cabinet have now agreed to progress this project but it seems very premature to agree to spend £1.5million on stage 3 and 4 when the funding is not in place and the outcome of LGR is not known for a few more months. As I’ve said before, the new authority or authorities that take over from Gedling Borough Council may have completely different ideas on leisure provision going forward.
The budget papers for next month allow for the Richard Herrod Centre to stay open until next year, but there’s no separate provision in it, or in the latest report on Carlton Active for the cost of redundancy for all the staff at the Richard Herrod and some at the civic centre. It seems to me that the staff have been forgotten in all this.
The cabinet have agreed to the recommendations of the report but I just wish they would pause until the outcome of LGR is clearer. In the meantime, they could have a look into having the centre at a new site that would provide the room for the necessary parking provision and footprint of the building.
