Future of city’s leisure facilities ‘needs serious attention’

THE FUTURE of Sheffield’s leisure facilities – and how to fund them – needs serious consideration, according to the city council’s finance chief.

The council has bailed out Sheffield City Trust, also known as Sheffield International Venues, after it got into serious difficulties. Its eight sites include the English Institute of Sport, Hillsborough Leisure Centre, Ponds Forge International Sports Centre and iceSheffield.

The trust received £1m earlier this year, will get an annual £2.8m subsidy and will get a further £3m towards health and safety costs and maintenance. But council chiefs have warned the cash is a short-term measure to stop leisure facilities closing imminently, and there must be a long-term strategy for their future funding and management,

Eugene Walker, executive director of resources, told a scrutiny meeting: “Sheffield International Venues have been trying to run services for 10 years through an austerity period.

“We have got to a point where it’s actually incredibly difficult to run public leisure facilities without a subsidy and this is proving that. There was a plan put forward to do it at zero subsidy and it has not worked.

“We now need to fundamentally assess all those assets and what the long term future is because it is frankly going to have to involve us thinking about more significant investment than the £3m to upgrade some of our facilities.”