Leisure Funding - Carn Brea

Last week, with the Scottish referendum debate raging, the Council announced that Asda had pulled out of the deal to buy the site of the running track at Carn Brea.

Personally, I hate the idea of the running track no longer being available as a fully public facility. However, last November the Council announced that they were entering into the Asda deal to provide funds to refurbish the centre, whose future was vulnerable.

Since then, as a result of forced sudden closures of other leisure centres in East Cornwall, following an incident at Lux Park when ducting dropped into the pool, there was a review conducted of all leisure centres in Cornwall. It found that there were £18m worth of maintenance works needed. Only £4m has been budgetted for, which was carried out to avoid any centres being closed immediately.

Since then the Cabinet has also announced its draft budget which withdraws all funding from leisure services.

But the spin last week was that there was no need to worry. That does not appear frank or transparent.