Save Cricklade Leisure Centre from Closure

North Wiltshire District Council (NWDC) used to run all six leisure centres.

In 2000 it created an independent trust, called North Wiltshire Leisure Ltd (NWLL) to run the centres. This trust is responsible for the day-to-day running but NWDC owns the buildings.

The council pays NWLL a yearly management fee, expected to be more than £1million when it is renewed in January, 2006.

NWLL appointed a new chairman, Mike Buckley, in 2003.

Two years later the management team employed by NWLL to run the centres was disbanded. It had accrued debts of £500,000 in two years and was being criticised for poor management.

Leisure centre staff turnover was high, morale was low and basic service standards, including cleanliness, were not being met.

NWDC was forced to bail it out and paid off the debt to stop the leisure centres falling into the hands of the administrators.

Since NWLL was gripped by a confidence crisis, the council appointed a new management team on its behalf.

Wycombe Leisure has been running the centres, under NWDC, ever since. Wycombe Leisure carried out a review and told the council what was wrong with the six centres.

NWDC decided it had to validate the findings and appointed its own auditors, Strategic Leisure, in 2006. The fee remains a secret.

The council set up a multi-political-party council committee to monitor the review, called the Leisure Provision Working Group.

Strategic Leisure carried out the review and submitted a report to the council. The details of the review and other documents relevant to the decision making process can be found on the NWDC website - Click Here

Strategic Leisure considered a number of options, including keeping all the centres open, and closing all the centres, or doing nothing. They also considered returning the Leisure Provision services 'in house' - i.e. for the council to take back the day to day management.

The report criticised both NWLL and NWDC but ultimately concluded that the state of the buildings etc at both Cricklade and Wootton Bassett would make any future investment in them futile. It has recommended that Cricklade, Calne and Wootton Bassett are shut and that the council negotiate a new contract for managing the other three centres with another provider (potentially Wycombe Leisure). There seems to be some appetite for replacing the facilities, or at least some of them, in Wootton Bassett in the long term, through a Private Finance Initiative.

Officers at NWDC met at the end of November 2006 to review and agree with the recommendations laid out by Strategic Leisure.

Communities and staff at the affected centres were told about the decision on 23 November.

Wootton Bassett was brought back into the list of centres to be saved when the importance of the strategic arrangement with the local school was recognised. This still left Cricklade scheduled for closure.

A crisis point came in mid February 2007 when the NWLL requested another increase in funding to let them continue operating until the end of March, and NWDC refused this request. NWLL then went into administration, and it appeared that all the centres would close almost immediately. In the face of a storm of public protest the crisis was broken on 19-Feb-2007 when the NWDC announced that they would pay the NWLL staff until the end of March, and continue to run the leisure centres until that time while considering options for running them beyond then. DC Leisure appeared to be NWDC's chosen operator for most of the Leisure Centres after the end of March.

After weeks of public campaigning and negotiations, at a morning meeting on Tuesday 6th March 2007, the NWDC agreed to provide the £60,000 required for KLIC to start running the Leisure Centre as of 1st April. While this is less than was originally asked for, KLIC plan to have an organisation in place to run the Centre as of that date.