In 2019, a few short weeks after becoming leader at Lichfield DC, an 11,000 signature petition landed on my desk, calling for the planned closure of a dilapidated 1970s leisure centre to be reversed. We held a cabinet meeting to discuss. We expected large numbers of observers, so we moved to a larger venue, where more than 500 people turned up to watch the meeting.
The message from my officers at the time was clear – there was neither the capital nor the revenue funding available for a leisure centre, confirmed in a very official letter to me from the chief executive. Off-the-shelf plans available at the time also made it clear that a project to build a new leisure centre would take many years.
That evening, in front of so many residents, we agreed to invest a small capital sum to prolong the life of the existing leisure centre, and committed £5m to a new facility, to be built within three years' time. Covid had other plans, laying waste to the leisure industry across the country, closing our local swimming pools and throwing the whole future of our existing, and future, leisure centres into turmoil.
Coming out of the global pandemic, I was certain leisure centres should be basic civic amenities, and something which Lichfield must absolutely maintain. Covid had reiterated the importance of community wellbeing – and the impact of leisure centres across the entire socio-economic spectrum on improving physical fitness and mental health, while reducing social isolation, had become clearer and clearer.
The £5m we had committed is a big number – however it is nowhere near big enough to build a leisure centre. We needed a willing partner, but with the private sector backing away from leisure centres even pre-Covid, we knew we needed to find the money ourselves, and fast.
With our round 1 bid to the Levelling Up Fund (LUF) unsuccessful, we pushed ahead with a revised bid for round 2 and submitted a bid for £15m knowing full well there was only an outside chance of it being approved. Competition was fierce – 525 bids submitted with just 111 successful – so while I was upset at not getting funding, I can't say I was surprised.
A ‘Plan B' route for funding the leisure centre was prepared (but kept very quiet) knowing the likelihood of an unsuccessful LUF bid.
Council staff from both our major projects and finance teams worked hard devising not only a leisure centre scheme that we would still be able to deliver with even tighter funding constraints, but also on exploring options for where the remaining money would come from.
By adopting a pre-existing design, rather than a bespoke build, and with an overground ‘tank' rather than a below-ground pool, we managed to keep the capital requirements down to approximately £10m.
One extremely important element to me was the ongoing revenue costs of the leisure centre – not wishing to saddle my successors with an ongoing year-on-year liability to keep the doors open.
Our s151 officer and chief executive worked to look at revenue savings as well as additional capital investment in other leisure facilities which could cross-subsidise the future leisure centre.
The end result is a plan to fund the capital investment by borrowing £5m externally and using £5m of internal borrowing, while investing upwards of £1m in commercially interesting leisure facilities across the district; providing increased access to communities across our area, while also ensuring our leisure centre can maintain a revenue-neutral position.
I am proud we now have a way ahead – forged from strong political will, clear leadership from our chief executive, and detailed technical work by our finance and projects team. Meanwhile, I am looking forward to donning my swimming shorts, ready for December 2024.
Cllr Doug Pullen is leader of Lichfield DC
@Lichfield_DC
