A new community sports hall costing nearly £2.1m is intended to help meet the increasing need for more amenities for Didcot's fast-growing population.

Willowbrook Community Sports Hall -- due to be completed in the autumn -- is going up at Ladygrove Country Park.

The name Willowbrook has been adopted because of the large number of drainage ditches which cross the site, at the north of the town.

The building will include a large hall, the size of four badminton courts, and two smaller halls.

Part of the development will be for the Ladygrove Playgroup, which at present occupies a temporary hut in the car park of Ladygrove Park. There will be changing rooms for indoor and outdoor activities.

SOLL -- South Oxfordshire Leisure Ltd, a not-for-profit company which has been appointed to manage the new hall -- is now planning to add a £500,000 fitness centre.

The Willowbrook Community Sports Hall project is being undertaken by Didcot Town Council with contributions totalling £1.38m from South Oxfordshire District Council. Developers who have built new houses at Ladygrove have contributed £380,000. The town council is contributing £200,000 towards the cost.

It is being built on land, owned by Didcot Town Football Club, which is being leased to the town council at a nominal rent. Margaret Davies, district councillor and chairman of the town council's finance committee, said that in 1998 a report by consultants, commissioned by the district council and town council, highlighted the need for more indoor sports facilities -- equivalent in size to four badminton courts -- as well as outdoor sports areas.

The present project follows an unsuccessful bid for Sports Lottery funding for a larger complex which would have also included an artificial turf sports area and tennis courts.

Mrs Davies said Willowbrook Community Sports Hall would go some way to meeting the shortage of indoor facilities for the whole town but particularly Ladygrove. Mrs Davies said: "We would like to see a whole range of activities in the hall -- tea dances, youth clubs, indoor football, badminton, cricket practice, basketball, short mat bowls, netball, meetings, church groups, aerobics and dance lessons."

Stuart Henshaw, managing director of SOLL, said the community and sports hall along with the fitness centre would be staffed by a manager, sports officers, receptionists and expert fitness staff.