Councillor hits out over plans to turn centre into nursery
YOKER Sports Centre is to close and be converted into a nursery – sparking outrage over the council’s alleged “underhanded” approach to the community hub’s future.
Despite assurances before the pandemic that part of the centre would be converted into a kindergarten and the rest of the building kept as a gym, Michael Cullen, an independent councillor for the area, claimed that the council had gone back on its word.
He said: “There’s been no information from the council, there has been no hint of this.
“Since September last year, we have lost the Yoker Resource Centre, the Peterson Park Hall and now we’re losing the sports centre.”
Mr Cullen added that the centre was popular with young people in the area, with many turning up at a previous meeting to fight for its future.
“They all use that gym, families use it,” he said.
“It’s not the busiest gym in the world, but it is a good community gym. It wasn’t built by the council, it was built by the community. They built it themselves, got the fundraising.”
The council said the plans were going ahead because of the Scottish Government’s commitment to increasing free nursery places for three and four-year-olds and demand in the community for a kindergarten.
A spokeswoman for the council said: “When current Covid-19 restrictions are lifted, Glasgow Life their will explore the re-provisioning of some of the services previously provided from Yoker to the facilities which were constructed as part of the council’s education facility at Clyde Campus, which was designed and built with enhanced infrastructure to support community sports activity.
“Discussions are currently ongoing between Glasgow Life and the Council and further work is being undertaken to fully implement this plan.
“We will share more details and information in the coming weeks as this is progressed.”
While Mr Cullen accepted that budgets were being squeezed by the pandemic, he thought locals had not been given a fair say on the future of the sports centre.
“It’s the underhandedness of it,” he added. “This was decided in November and the only reason we found out about it was because the chair of the area partnership meeting told us in an update about the progression of the nursery plans, other than that, we wouldn’t have known.
“The room was shocked by the news. The young people are being locked out. This is a deprived community and we’re in a public health crisis where we’re talking about health and wellbeing and that will be the main thing in the future but at the same time we’re removing access for local people.”