We won’t survive if sports centre stays closed until April, say clubs

CLUBS BASED at the mothballed Ponds Forge International Sports Centre are fighting for it to reopen, saying they will not survive until April 2021 without it.

The news that Sheffield City Trust(SCT)wasreopeningmostof its venues except for Ponds Forge “devastated” thousands of people and even brought some to tears.

Around 1,400 competitive members across seven clubs, including diving, swimming and water polo – some of whom are training for the rescheduled Olympic Games next year – practise at the site alongside many recreational users and coaches who rely on it to run their businesses.

An email sent to groups based at Ponds Forge by David Parry, Swim England’s north-east regional officer, said in the “best case scenario” the earliest it could reopen depending on circumstances would be April 2021.

Tom Owens, head coach of City of Sheffield Diving Club, said his and other clubs will likely not survive until then and it could result in redundancies.

He said: “It’s not only devastating from the perspective of the desire to get back in and get training but it poses huge questions. We operate as a not-forprofit limited company and we have since 2013, as do the swimming club, because that’s when the council removed the budget for aquatic sport in Sheffield. We don’t think we will survive until April next year.”

But he added “if we go down we won’t go down without a fight” and added the clubs are working together on plans to reopen it for teams which they will then put to SCT and work out a cost before campaigning for the extra money needed.

Sheffield Council put aside £15m to enable SCT to reopen most of its facilities this week, which was £10m more than originally budgeted for. But it said to reopen Ponds Forge in its current format it would need to provide an extra £1.5m up to the end of March next year and more than £3m for the following financial year – a cost they said was too high without government funding.

In an open letter, Andrew Snelling, chief executive of Sheffield City Trust, said: “The costs of reopening Ponds Forge combined with the current levels of activity able to take place would create a significant financial requirement on the city. Running costs of Ponds Forge’s pools are five times more than any of our other venues’ pools. In fact, the operating costs of Concord Sports Centre, Heeley Pool and Hillsborough Leisure Centre combined costs significantly less than that of Ponds Forge alone.”

He said that Sheffield City Trust had an “open-to-all approach to fitness” and that the reopening plan is designed to provide the highest coverage of physical activity possible at the most efficient cost to the tax-paying people of Sheffield.

If we go down we won’t go down without a fight. Tom Owens, head coach of City of Sheffield Diving Club.