Sports centre reveals £250,000 loss in past year
SEFTON Council has revealed it made a loss of almost £250,000 running the Crosby Lakeside Centre last year.
The facility in the south of the borough, beside the Marine Lake at Waterloo, hosts a variety of water sports and also features a gym.
The council has ambitious plans to expand the attraction, partly by building an adventure playground featuring a high ropes course. It also hopes to develop the centre into a four-star hotel in a bid to raise an extra £186,000 a year from the tourist economy.
These plans have come under opposition from some residents, who fear views of the area will be spoilt, and business owners, who say the hotel would had a negative impact on other hotels.
Despite being one of the key attractions in the area and situated near Crosby beach, the centre led to a deficit of £246,513 for the council last year.
The figures were released in a Freedom of Information request and cover the financial year of 2016-17.
According to the data, the council earned £1,377,466 in income throughout the year, against an expenditure of £1,623,979.
The loss comes at a time when the council says it must become more commercially focused in order to offset huge cuts from central government.
These cuts mean Sefton Council has faced a funding gap of £169m over the past six years, with a further £64m of savings needed to balance the budget by 2020.