Criticism over leisure contract

Amid criticism of the operator of South Holland’s leisure facilities new options for them are being pursued, it’s been claimed.

Coun Angela Newton has been among those leading the calls for replacements for the likes of the Castle Sports Complex.

And at a budget scrutiny meeting last week she criticised operator Parkwood’s closure of facilities, particularly the cafe, while the council was ‘shovelling’ cash into it in the last couple of years.

She said South Holland District Council had been “walked all over”, by Parkwood while discussing the matter at a council meeting to discuss the proposed budget.

“I don’t think we’ve had a good deal.

“I know we’ve had COVID and we’ve had to pay them shed loads of money but when we’ve reopened they’ve been allowed to close down the cafe facilities. I know it was a loss leader but it was there.

“That (not having the cafe) is having an adverse effect, people are not using the facilities as much, certainly not the bowling club.

“We’re not attracting clubs as we’ve used to as we can only provide sandwiches that the bowls club have to make.

“We’ve allowed them to dump it and grab all the money we’ve shovelled over to them.

“We need to have a serious look at that.”

Coun Peter Coupland said: “We’ve got to organise Parkwood as I think the contract runs out in a couple of years’ time so we’ve got to make sure they’re going to return stuff for us.

“But there’s only one thing these people are interested in and that’s the bottom line. They’ll do anything to increase that.

“We’re trying to keep in front of that and make sure their bottom line is not at our expense.

“We’re meeting them in the next couple of weeks to drive a hard bargain.

“They’re getting back to normal now, the numbers are pretty good.”

Coun Newton reiterated her disappointment that no new leisure facilities have been planned with just around £900,000 worth of maintenance budgeted in over the next five years.

As previously reported, Independent councillors had stated they felt new facilities had been ‘half promised’ by now.

But Coun Coupland said the council was still looking at the options and mentioned a fruitful meeting with Peterborough City Council last week

“They’ve got some new leisure people in looking at ways of doing it, cheaper ways, and still getting a good product at the end.

“We’re going to speak to them.

“That’s the start of the leisure trail and we will keep pushing it.”

Previously when asked at a meeting of the council about the lack of funding towards new leisure facilities Coun Coupland said the authority will be “revising” its budget: “We have reserves to do the smaller work but we need something quite large on the leisure side.

“I agree over the years when you look at what spend on leisure with new boilers etc, it adds up.

“I can’t say it’s going to be this year but that is certainly on the radar after this year’s budget.

“We’ve got to look after what we’ve got otherwise no-one will come back to use the facilities, but there will come a time when we need to borrow X amount of pounds to do it.

“I think everyone wants to do it but it’s pennies at the end of the day.

“I think we’d have started down the road with this if COVID-19 hadn’t have happened. We put work into it, but like a lot of things it didn’t happen.”

Parkwood declined to comment.