'All the dominoes are starting to fall'- Fresh hope for reopening of Deepings Leisure Centre following £850k funding boost

Fresh life has been breathed into hopes to see the Deepings Leisure Centre reopen once again.

Members of the newly-formed The Deepings Community Leisure Community Interest Company (CIC) have been left overjoyed that their request for £850,000 of funding towards getting their beloved leisure centre reopened has been approved.

The decision was ratified by South Kesteven District Council on Thursday (January 12) and described by SKDC district councillor Virginia Moran- one of the leading members of the the CIC- as ‘significant change in the balance’ back in favour of the centre opening once again.

The centre has been closed since July 2021 due to safety concerns around a leaky roof damaged by heavy rainfall.

Cllr Moran said: “I’ve been so busy since the announcement I’ve barely had a chance to sit back on the sofa and think, oh my god, we did it!

"I did think the vote would be closer but it wasn’t, 25-15 is very good. I was very emotional after the vote.”

“Me, along with the other Deepings district councillors have been on this since we were promised a £20m brand new centre, which was then downgraded to a £10m refurb and then downgraded again to nothing.

“We have had an immense amount of public support.”

The group applied for the £850,000 of funding as a contribution towards their estimated repair bill of £2.266 million, far smaller than SKDC’s estimated repair bill of £10m.

Further funding to be sort from Lincolnshire County Council, local Parish Councils, Deepings St James United Charities, a private contractor and local fundraising efforts by the CIC itself.

The group’s cause has also been boosted by a number of local companies offering to carry out works at cost, providing a significant reduction in costs for the project.

The CIC now has until February to satisfy the site’s owners Lincolnshire County Council’s remaining queries about its business plan and has already begun working with a new government-appointed consultant, who will help guide the bid through the process.

Developments will also now allow a new partner to run the centre on the CIC’s behalf to be found.

Cllr Moran added: “There have been some queries because we haven’t tied up who our partner is going to be yet but it’s been a chicken and egg situation. We haven’t been able to tie up a partner because we didn’t have anything to offer them.

“That balance has changed significantly now with the decision and that’s what we’re working on at the minute.

“All the dominoes have been lined up and they’re now all starting to fall. “Quite a few local companies have came to us and said they would do the roof at cost; others have offered to do other parts of the building at cost and we’ve managed to get prices together like that; not all at cost but it’s all looking pretty good.

“Once we were offered the chance to buy the land and building, we had to look at how much it was really going to cost to repair. We knew it wasn’t going to cost £10m. That working out was completely flawed.”

The building was in danger of demolition with the land then being handed over to the Anthem Schools Trust, which runs the Deepings School if a suitable buyer was not found.

This appears to be more unlikely now but the CIC is looking to work with the school in future and has high hopes of running the centre at a profit in the future.

Cllr Moran said: “We knew we had the income from the school for the hall, we knew the Deepings swimming club would come back in a heartbeat, we knew the local schools would come back.

"The swim school, in the past, had 1000 children learning to swim so we have all these definite streams of income.

“The support from locals has never wavered. We started off with 250 memberships but we did a consultation in November and asked residents if they would sign up for gym and swim at £30 a month and over 1000 people said they would. It made us start to think that we can do this!”