Minutes:
The Head of Leisure and Cultural Services attended the meeting to provide an update on the position in respect of groups that would be displaced following the move to a new leisure centre in Bromsgrove. During the delivery of this update a number of areas were highlighted for Members’ consideration:
· The new leisure centre was progressing well; on time and on budget.
· Construction of the new centre would be completed by October 2017 and the Council was aiming for the facility to be opened in November.
· The contractor was due to take ownership of the current Dolphin Centre site on 14th October 2017. At this stage the sports hall would cease to be available for the use of community groups.
· Officers had already held meetings with a small number of groups; the next stage of the process would involve reviewing the specific needs of particular groups.
· The heads of terms had been agreed with BAM for the majority of areas and it was anticipated that these would be finalised alongside contractual arrangements in due course.
Following the verbal update Members discussed a series of points in detail:
· The time that had been taken for the Council to negotiate an agreement with BAM and the need to follow a proper legal process.
· The potential scope of the agreement with BAM; Members were advised that this would cover 48 weeks in the year.
· The arrangements for transferring community groups to utilise BAM facilities if they met after 6.00pm or at weekends.
· The potential for an agreement with BAM not to be reached. Officers suggested that whilst this remained a possibility it was not anticipated that the Council would be unable to reach an agreement with BAM.
· The list of groups given protective status by the Sports Development team. This comprised a number of groups that had long-standing booking arrangements to utilise the sports hall at the Dolphin Centre and had been built into the service specification.
The reasons why officers had not yet arranged to discuss with representatives of some displaced groups the alternative locations in which they could hold their activities was also discussed. Members were advised that some groups were not necessarily sustainable in the long-term. It had also been considered more appropriate for discussions to take place in the new financial year and was more appropriate to liaise with groups closer to the date of the current Dolphin Centre’s closure.
In this context Members noted that there were frustrations amongst local community groups potentially affected by the pending closure of the old Dolphin Centre. To address this a number of actions were considered, including holding a meeting with affected groups to discuss available options as soon as possible and holding a public meeting to enable Officers and the Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture Services to brief the public. However, there were some concerns that these actions could be too premature as the negotiations with BAM had not yet concluded. For this reason Members agreed that officers arrange, as a first step, to meet with groups which held their activities in the sports centre in the day time.
RESOLVED that officers should arrange to meet with groups, which currently meet in the sports hall at the Dolphin Centre during the day to discuss future meeting arrangements.