The full details of Wiltshire Council’s leisure review were revealed on Monday when the report that will be discussed by cabinet members next Tuesday was published.
It shows, as the Gazette reported last week, that a number of centres will close and others will be offered to community groups as part of a plan that could take until 2025 to implement.
The council says it will spend £117 million on capital development over the next 25 years. It says this will pay for three new leisure centres and refurbishment of others.
If the changes were not made, it would cost £93 million over the next 25 years to maintain the existing centres at their current standards.
Phase one of the plan, which will take place from 2011 to 2015, will concentrate on building a new centre in Melksham. The chairman of the Melksham Area Board, Jonathan Seed, said this week this would definitely include a swimming pool and he hoped it would be built on council-owned land next to the new The Oaks school.
“I have fought very hard to get the commitment that Melksham’s sporting facilities will be replaced before the old ones are closed and I have a categorical assurance it will include a swimming pool.”
But one casualty of the change is likely to be the tenpin bowling alley at Christie Miller. A new indoor bowls hall is to be created in Westbury but this is unlikely to incorporate the tenpin style of bowling.
Phase one will also include the transfer of sports centres in Pewsey, Wootton Bassett, Corsham, Tisbury and Westbury to the community if people come forward to run them.
Phase two, scheduled for 2016 to 2020, will focus on a new centre being created in Trowbridge and improvements to Devizes Leisure Centre. This will include the building of a learners’ pool.
Closing at this stage will be Trowbridge pool and the Castle Place leisure centre in Trowbridge along with the transfer of the pools in both Westbury and Bradford on Avon.
The final phase, between 2021 and 2025, will include major changes for Warminster with the creation of a new centre and the closure of the existing one. But there are no guarantees a pool is included.
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