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Saving Deepings Leisure Centre

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Please click HERE to download a copy of the letter from Sir John Hayes MP. Please print it,  complete and post back to his office.

This website space has kindly been provided by Deepings Business Community

UPDATE FROM Andy Pelling 12th April 2024:

The community group had two very positive meetings on 5th April and are now hoping that we can start to move this
project forwards soon. It has been frustratingly slow progress to date. To help accomplish that we may need additional
assistance within the core group. 1 or 2 people with spare time (maybe up to 10 hours / week?) over the next few months,
ideally who are local and are as passionate as we are about re-opening the Deepings Leisure Centre. You would need to
be able to help our current team manage the “pre-refurbishment” aspects of the project which may involve tendering,
helping with bids for grants, liaising with various 3rd party organisations, working to satisfy grant conditions and co-
ordinating the work of other group members. You will need to be patient enough to cope with the bureaucracy!
Contact Andy on 07803 907782 or Virginia on 07725 579955 for a no obligation chat about more details.

Update from Virginia Moran – 23rd Oct

Thought I’d bring you up to date with where we are with our bid…
LCC – we put in our bid and have subsequently answered a list of supplementary questions. Whilst we haven’t heard if we were successful or not (we were the only bidders) the proposal to sell the leisure centre to us has been through two of the three stages. I spoke at the scrutiny committee and the proposal was passed, it has also passed the Executive meeting. The final decision will go the full council on, I believe, 5th December.
SKDC – We have put a bid in for a substantial contribution from SKDC and there will be a special combined meeting of the Finance and Culture & Visitor Economy Committees on 20th November, assuming this is supported, it will then go to Full Council on 23rd November. We have now been up to Grantham three times for meetings with the Chief Finance Officer and replied to an enormous number of questions. We will be speaking at probably both meetings.
In the interim we are constantly honing our costs and estimated cashflow forecasts, despite the fact that we, as a group, will not be running the centre, a professional provider will be doing that on our behalf (we are currently in talks with four possible providers) whilst we retain ownership of the building and land as a community asset.
I have to admit it’s all dragging on painfully slowly and we are aware that it seems that ‘nothing is happening’ – please be assured that it is.
We are also going through applications to all local parish and town councils for additional funding and waiting to hear if we can submit a Community Ownership application. We are applying for grants where we can but the current lack of ownership of the building isn’t helping.
So, assuming that we get the results and funds we are striving for, we then have to go through the legal stuff…
On the original Invitation to Tender from LCC the plan showed just the leisure centre and a shared access. We have requested that a section of the car park and rear yard be included in the redlining (which has to approved by the Department for Education and The Anthem Trust) that so will be another round of slowly turning hoops we have to endure.
How much longer is all this going to take – no idea – but we are optimistic that it will be early next year with a view to opening at least part of the centre by next year’s school holidays. We know this is an ambitious goal but ‘where there is a will there’s a way’.
If any of you would like to attend either of the SKDC meetings we’ll post full details nearer the time with links to the webcast.
Thanks, as always, for your unwavering support.

 

After SKDC closed the Deepings Leisure Centre in July 2021 it has been left to deteriorate badly, making the task of re-opening it that much harder and more costly. However, with the massive response from the community offering help we are confident we can do our own Deepings Version of THE BIG BUILD SOS.

A group of local residents along with 3 Independent Councillors came together to try and save the centre and open it as a charitable run community concern. And so was born the DLCCG (Deepings Leisure Centre Community Group). They recognised that a registered charity would be a preferable body to oversee the fundraising and eventual running of the centre and so worked with Deepings Business Community to re-purpose the Deepings Community Fund, a charity that had been set up for local good causes but had never got started due to COVID.

Back row, from left: Phil Dilks, Paul Smith-Shelton, James Denniston, Martin Reilly, Andy Pelling, Daniel Speed

Front row, from left: Ashley Baxter, Bridget Ley, Virginia Moran, Ian Davies. Missing from the picture is Ian Stygall who was on holiday at the time of the photograph.

The group brought together lots of differing experience and skills and since the fateful decision by SKDC was taken in November 2022, this group has been working hard to try and secure funding, a lease for the building, options that work for all interested parties and sensible quotes from professional trades to fix the building. We will try and give periodic updates here from time to time but you can also find out more on our Facebook group – see button at top left of page.

 

We managed to get (Free of charge) some high resolution drone pictures of the roof and the Deepings Fire Service kindly offered their services to pump out the accumulated flood water.

11th April 2023  – Progress report by Virginia Moran.
Hi Everyone!
Hope you all had a nice Easter break!
Just wanted to update you on a few things. We have submitted our bid for a grant of just over £700k to the Community Ownership Fund- hurrah!!! This has been a mammoth undertaking with input from all of the Committee, but I want to make special mention of the incredible job Daniel Speed did in not only completing the application form (18 pages and over 6000 words) which forms the basis of our application, but also for the design work which went into the document which will be the basis of our 20 page business plan (images attached) – he has put an immense amount of work into this and we are all extremely grateful. Additional documentation attached to the application included the ‘Dear Councillor’ letters that you all kindly wrote back in the day, the results from the petition – around 9000 signatures and a very very large expanded spreadsheet going into the minute details of everything you can possibly think of that we have projected.
The Business Plan itself has been a long involved task for all of us but I, for one, think it is fantastic, it covers all our plans and includes what we intend to spend on the centre – around £1.5m, how that is being spent and why and includes cashflow projections going forward 15 years.
The conversations with LCC and the school/Anthem Trust are ongoing and we hope to have more news on that later in May.
The LCC survey of the building came back and all is well, no problems with the structure whatsoever.
On a very happy note Ian Stygall recently returned from his 3 month sabbatical in Australia and we are delighted that he can, finally, attend a meeting – yay! I’m pretty sure he’s milk and biscuit monitor for the next meeting.
Any questions – ask away – if we can answer them we will 🙂
Thanks, as always, for all your ongoing support.

FUNDRAISING STARTS

15th June 2023: Sorry it has been a long time since we have updated you but things have been moving frustratingly slowly after our initial speedy start.

We are waiting on organisations outside of our control, however, we are encouraged by the messages we are getting and should one or more of the pieces of the plan falter we do have some backup strategies.

I can’t go into further detail at the moment as there are commercial and political matters that require complete discretion until certain processes have been completed. In short, whilst we are very hopeful, we won’t know for sure until probably September if we can go with our preferred PLAN A or if we need to rework our strategy to one of the alternative scenarios.

 HOWEVER – we realise that Summer is by far the best time to undertake many of the fundraising activities and so would like to get started. Any monies raised will go to the DEEPINGS COMMUNITY FUND (registered charity no 1186193). In the worst-case scenario, that the Leisure Centre restoration project cannot go ahead, the remit of the DEEPINGS COMMUNITY FUND allows for any monies it has to be used for other local good causes at the discretion of the trustees.

SO WATCH OUT FOR FUNDAISING EVENTS STARTING SOON

Click here to find out more about the DEEPINGS COMMUNITY FUND

We hope to have a stall at the Deepings Carnival - come and say HELLO