Go ahead for leisure centre
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HALTON Borough Council has agreed to build a new leisure centre in Widnes to replace its ageing facility in Kingsway after councillors approved the development without debate or objection at a meeting.
The new building would cost the council an estimated £20m and include a swimming pool, gym and sports hall on the site of the former business centre in Moor Lane.
Councillors approved the development without debate or objection at a full council meeting at Runcorn Town Hall on Wednesday, October 16, after the previous edition of the Weekly News had gone to press.
A report prepared ahead of the meeting described the development as ‘a major and significant investment for the borough’ that would ‘contribute to improving an important gateway to the town centre’.
The council estimates the development would take three years to deliver, meaning the leisure centre would open towards the end of 2022.
The report went on to say that the ‘only reasonable way’ to fund the leisure centre would be for the council to borrow the £20m, although around £1m could be raised by selling the existing Kingsway site.
That site, the report said, ‘lends itself to a mixed use development with a focus on a residential offer for the borough’s older residents’.
In addition to the new leisure centre in Widnes, the reported noted that the council was also working to ‘promote leisure provision in Runcorn’, in part through the Halton Lea Healthy New Town Masterplan.
Council officers will now begin working to deliver the Moor Lane leisure centre and a further