Councillors have called on Cornwall Council's leading Cabinet to defer any decision on whether to close leisure centres so that more can be done to keep them open.

The council's customer and support services overview and scrutiny committee met this morning to consider a report on the proposed closure of five leisure facilities in Cornwall.

Leisure centres in Falmouth, Launceston, Saltash and Wadebridge, along with the hydrotherapy pool in St Austell, have all been earmarked for closure after operator GLL told the council that it could no longer run them without financial support.

The operators said that unless the council provided around £439,000 towards the facilities' running cost then they would have to close.

Cornwall Council says that it has a policy of not subsidising leisure facilities and that it does not have any budget available to fund what is not a statutory service.

The possible closure of leisure centres has been met with a chorus of protests and petitions from people concerned about losing their facilities. Many have been worried about the impact on school swimming lessons and the health and wellbeing of those who use the centres.

The overview and scrutiny committee was considering the proposals, along with a new leisure strategy for the council, ahead of a Cabinet meeting next week which will make a decision on the issue.

However, in a debate lasting almost four hours, councillors were critical of the amount of information which had been provided for them and said they were not in a position to make any recommendation to the Cabinet.

The committee heard from Sophie Hosking, service director for neighbourhoods, who said that none of the 13 leisure centres currently operated by GLL in Cornwall were making any profit.

She said: "The weekly usage across the whole portfolio is 60 to 70% compared to 2019. The portfolio has lost £6million in the first year of the pandemic. None of the portfolio is making any profit at all. Pre-pandemic there was only one or two centres which did make a profit."

The director also claimed that the amount of financial support which GLL would need to keep the centres open could be as high as £750,000 and suggested it could rise to £1m.

Mebyon Kernow councillor Dick Cole said that the committee could not make an informed recommendation to the Cabinet because there was insufficient information.

He said that councillors needed more information about all the centres run by GLL in Cornwall and whether there was any possibility of the more successful centres subsidising the less successful ones.

Cllr Cole said that councillors also needed much more information and details to be able to scrutinise the issue and provide a recommendation to Cabinet.

Richard Pears, Cabinet member responsible for leisure facilities, said that none of the options available to the council – either to close the centres or provide funding were "great".

He said that the pandemic had had a major impact on leisure services and said that they may never return to how much they were used before the pandemic.

Cllr Pears added:

"I don't like the two binary options of subsidising them or closing them, but that is where we are, that is what covid has done and our huge budget hole has put us in this place."

Councillors heard that the Cabinet report on the issue for its meeting next week would include plans for a transition fund which could help with the transfer of leisure centres to new operators if that was the decision of the Cabinet.

There were questions about the impact of the closure of leisure centres on health services and whether there was any information on the cost implications for health services.

Sophie Hosking said that information wasn't available but said that public health officers had said that those using the leisure centres were not the people they would like to see using them.

Julian German put forward an amendment to the committee's recommendations stating that the draft leisure strategy was not fit for purpose and that the Cabinet should agree to provide funding to keep the leisure centres open while more work was done to find a way forward and to work with GLL to increase the use of the centres. However, when put to the vote it was lost with five votes in favour and six against.

The committee agreed to recommend to the Cabinet that the item should be deferred to allow interested parties more time to develop business cases to take over the running of services and for more work to be done on the leisure strategy taking into account the responses from the council's consultation.

It also agreed to set up a task and finish group to look at supporting leisure facilities in Cornwall in the long term. That was agreed with six votes in favour and five against.

The Cabinet will consider the recommendation and a report on the issue when it meets next Wednesday (December 15th).

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