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Response by the Cabinet Member: Thank you for your questions regarding the leisure proposals as suggested by Freedom Leisure to address the immediate in year financial pressures for 22/23. As you will have seen, additional information was sent to all Councillors on Wednesday 21st December which is the same information received by Cabinet to inform their meeting on 13th December. There will now be a more comprehensive review starting early in 2023 to consider the future sustainability of all leisure centres in Powys. In answer to your more specific questions [repeated for reference]- • Confirm that he and / or officers were in discussion with Freedom Leisure in respect to the impact on the leisure centres in Powys of the energy crisis on or before the 13th October. · Officers were in discussion with Freedom Leisure before the 13th October 2022. Further detail of this timeline is provided in slide 12 of the presentation sent to all Councillors. • If the answer to the above question is No, on what date did Freedom Leisure commence such discussions with him and / or officers. · Timeline provides dates – slide 12 of presentation. • Confirm why the budget crisis in respect to the contract for the delivery of leisure services with Freedom, was not mentioned or discussed with members of the council as part of the Confidential update on the Council budget situation for the current 2022-23 budget and the 2023-24 budget in its meeting on Thursday 8th December. · At the meeting the S151 officer set out the Corporate position and the very difficult financial position that we are in for 22/23. No service specific measures were considered. In addition to which it was clearly pointed that we would need to use reserves to cover the year end position and that every effort was being made to reduce the in year overspend. • Why the Impact assessment that was included with the papers considered by Cabinet on the 13th December made very little or no reference to the impact of the centre’s and pool’s closures on the health and wellbeing of the residents of Powys, which is clearly seen by Freedom as a key role that there services play in supporting the communities they serve. · Decisions to temporarily reduce access to any facilities is far from easy and it is fully acknowledged that any difficult decisions will have an impact on people and communities. The proposals were to temporarily close three leisure centres and three swimming pools for three months, which would still have enabled customers to access seven swimming pools and eleven leisure centres throughout Powys. Acknowledging that customers may not have been able to access their ‘nearest centre’ but retaining a number of centres to enable participation. Consideration was taken by Freedom Leisure to the impact of any proposals made to the Council. However these proposals were focusing on a short term / temporary situation to deal with an immediate issue. There were always plans to undertake a full review of the whole of the leisure provision where the longer term impacts will be fully considered and consulted on.
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