Leisure centres to be given to charity (From The Oxford Times)

Leisure centres to be given to charity

6:10am Thursday 11th December 2008 in

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Oxford's swimming pools and leisure centres look set to be handed to a private charitable organisation to run.

The city council’s Labour group is reviving the previous Liberal Democrat administration plan to give away the leisure services to an outside body because it costing the financially-troubled local authority too much money.

Talks are now taking place with two charitable organisations that are bidding to run leisure services for the council on a not-for-profit trust basis, similar to the way services are run in other district councils areas in Oxfordshire.

It is hoped that a charitable trust would be able to raise enough money to refurbish some of the city’s deteriorating facilities and build a swimming pool in Blackbird Leys.

Bob Timbs, the city councillor in charge of leisure, said: “The leisure department is the council’s biggest loss-maker and it is a top priority to tackle this.

“We cannot continue in the way that we are doing. I estimate that we are subsidising every visit to Temple Cowley Pools by about £4 per person.

“The council would like to build a brand new competition swimming pool, possibly in the Blackbird Leys area, but we can’t fund that simply through taxpayers’ money.”

At present, the leisure services budget is £2.3m a year, but the authority was not able to say last night how much it actually loses.

Mr Timbs added that in any deal made with a charitable organisation, the pay and conditions of leisure staff would “essentially remain the same”.

Bob Price, the leader of the city council, told The Oxford Times there was a deadline of January 7 for bids and a decision is expected at the end of that month.

Mr Timbs said there were major advantages in a not-for-profit trust taking over lesiure services because it would be able to bid for funding from bodies such as Sport England and other sources which the council is not allowed to draw on.

He added: “The charitable trusts have lots of experience of running other leisure facilities which are a proven success.

“They have workers who go out into schools to bring visitors in, and employ sports coaches.”

Mr Timbs said the council’s own leisure department would also be entitled to take part in the bidding process.

David Rundle, the leader of the council’s Liberal Democrat opposition, said the proposal was a “significant change”

He added: “This has been coming for a long time and it’s good that the Labour group has seen sense at last.

“At the moment, the council is subsidising each visit to our leisure centres, and it’s a significant amount each time.

“At the moment, we do not have the ability in-house to solve the problems, and we need to bring in expertise to assist us.”

The council runs leisure centres across the city, including six swimming pools and the ice rink in Oxpens Road.

The council is proposing authority-wide cuts totalling £5.4m due to wide-ranging financial pressures, including the escalating cost of the concessionary bus fares scheme for pensioners and the potential write-off of £4.5m in the Icelandic banks collapse.