Update on sports and leisure
Our sports and leisure facilities play a vital role in helping our community to stay healthy and well – and as a dad of two young children I know how important they can be for families as an affordable and fun place to spend time together too.
Creating a healthy and well future is one of our key Future Lewisham priorities, and we have invested millions of pounds over the past year to improve and maintain our facilities in a Covid-secure environment. This has to be balanced against the intense financial pressure on the Council to make savings of £40m over the next three years. We need to think carefully about how to spend these limited funds to benefit as many residents as possible.
Read more about our key Future Lewisham priorities.
Next week I’m bringing a report to Mayor and Cabinet, which sets out our commitment to providing excellent leisure services that meet the needs of our residents, and will seek agreement for a study to be carried out to look into how we could deliver a new leisure centre in the south of the borough.
The Bridge
We want to make sure that residents in all parts of Lewisham have access to excellent leisure facilities. The Bridge, a leisure centre in the Sydenham/Bellingham area, has historically been heavily subsidised by the Council due to high maintenance and ongoing running costs as a result of the age, make-up and layout of the site – it wasn’t designed as a public leisure centre and unfortunately we haven’t been able to safely reopen it following the lockdown.
We want to look into whether it would be possible to build a brand new, purpose-built leisure centre for the 21st century, rather than spending a lot of money to patch up an old centre that is no longer fit for purpose. The feasibility study will consider whether we can find a way to build a new leisure centre – estimated to cost about £25m – and also look at the opportunity to deliver much needed new housing in the borough.
In the absence of Government funding to build community facilities like this, we need to think outside the box and be ambitious in order to try to build the facilities we need. This is potentially a really exciting project, but needs careful consideration to make sure it can be delivered effectively and well.
This work is at a relatively early stage and I’m looking forward to sharing the results of the study when complete.
While The Bridge is closed, I am pleased that we have managed to retain the Lewisham Indoor Bowls Centre, working with partners to increase membership and participation. This is such an important indoor facility for people aged over 60.
Ladywell Arena
We have approached local sports groups to gauge the appetite amongst third parties to take on a lease for Ladywell Arena and to operate the site as a publically-accessible facility. In partnership with London Sport, the view is to transform Ladywell Arena into a truly community-led facility. We also want to increase the range of activities that take place there.
An Expression of Interest (EOI) went out to our network of community groups in late summer and we will update residents and Arena users in due course.
Wavelengths
The Wavelengths leisure pool is set to reopen later this year after major renovation works. The 25m pool is already fully refurbished and open for fitness swimming, inflatables sessions, swimming lessons and women’s only swim sessions.
We are investing over £700,000 in the leisure pool to increase participation and provision of swimming lessons. Exciting new plans are being worked on that will see beach-style seating areas and a range of inflatables and soft play areas to make the space even more family friendly.
Local people have told us that they really value Wavelengths leisure pool – so do we, and I’m pleased we’ve found a way to invest in it and keep it open. We are keen to move forward positively with the next stage of our leisure journey in Lewisham, and have commissioned a detailed and thorough independent assessment to ensure that our indoor sports and leisure facilities are high quality, in the right locations and accessible to all of our residents – this is also going to Mayor and Cabinet next week. We want people in Lewisham to enjoy and improve their health and well-being - a vision being developed through our 10 year Physical Activity Strategy.
Our leisure centres have something for everyone – from pilates to aqua fit and state of the art gym equipment to soft play – so if you’re interested in finding out what we have to offer, I’d urge you to check out your local leisure centre!