Meeting on future of Deepings Leisure Centre held at the Deepings School

Residents and business leaders who are dedicating time to save a town’s leisure centre have revealed their plans.

The community was left devastated after South Kesteven District Council broke its promise to spend £10.7 million on repairing the Deepings Leisure Centre.

It claimed that plans for a new roof and revamp were ditched because it could not afford it, and the building was handed back to Lincolnshire County Council which owns the leisure centre.

A group decided to seize the opportunity and try to reopen the leisure centre themselves, gaining support from the county council and The Deepings School, which uses the facility.

A meeting was held at the school on Monday (February 27) to update more than 100 people living in the town of the plans and explain what needed to be done.

Chairperson of the group, Virginia Moran, who lives in the Deepings and is a district councillor who opposed the closure, said: “We got together, looked at each other seriously and said we must be able to reopen this. We've had so many offers of help and so many people behind us we must be able to do this ourselves.”

She added that it’s not just about reopening the leisure centre as it was before but making it even better.

This would include creating a 60 to 80 station gym, a licensed bar and café, a soft play centre and a family changing village.

“We are not going to be able to do it on our own,” said Virginia, who encourages people to volunteer their skillsets.

Virginia said that when the group first started they didn’t know if Lincolnshire County Council and the school were waiting to ‘pull the building down’. However since discussions have begun she says they’ve been ‘brilliant’.

“It turns out nobody is very keen at tearing it down as it happens,” she said.

MP for the Deepings Sir John Hayes joined the meeting virtually to share his views and criticised South Kesteven District Council’s handling of the leisure centre claiming it 'has not come out of this smelling of roses'.

He added: “Moving forward we need to raise the money to reopen and refurbish the leisure centre so people in the Deepings can use it again. I am completely committed to that.

“You have my complete support.”

The district council’s survey which detailed the refurbishment would cost £10.7million was also called into question.

Sir John described it as seeming ‘extremely high’ while the group’s construction expert Martin Reilly described the use of ‘magic numbers’ that ‘couldn’t be relied on’.

Following a site survey the community group believes that the pool filtration would cost about £91,000 as opposed to the predicted £800,000 while the roof repair comes out at about £350,000 compared to between £650,000 to £700,000 by the council.

While the community group is not revealing what they expect the repairs to cost Andy Pelling, group treasurer, said it is ‘very much smaller than the figure South Kesteven District Council said’.

The group hopes to raise the funds through charity days, applying for grants, a membership scheme and support from the councils as well as doing as much of the work themselves as possible.

However one main concern stands in the way which could put a stop to the plans.

On the school site, which is next door, there has been ‘history of degradation of steelwork below ground level’ and there are fears this could affect the 1970s leisure centre building.

A contractor is set to carry out a survey of the building in the coming weeks to check if it is worth the investment.

“We have lots of reasons to be cheerful and lots of reasons to be fearful,” said Ashley Baxter, a district and county councillor.

South Kesteven District Council has been contacted for a comment.