Alpamare closure devastated swim firm - teacher

Lindsey Prior-Mckie ran her swimming lessons at Alpamare waterpark

A swimming teacher from Scarborough said she was left "devastated" by the closure of the Alpamare waterpark.

Lindsey Prior-Mckie, who used to run her business Super Swim Academy from the leisure park, had to refund payments for 150 children when the facility shut in October 2023.

Alpamare was taken over by the local authority in December 2023 after previous owners Benchmark Leisure Ltd went into administration.

North Yorkshire Council is due to choose a preferred bidder to take over the attraction at a meeting on Tuesday following a three-week tender process.

'Millions of pounds lost'

The council said it hoped to work with the new operator to reopen the park in time for the school summer holidays.

The former Scarborough Borough Council loaned Benchmark £9m in 2013 to partly pay for the park to be developed. Figures from 2022 showed Benchmark still owed £7.8m.

Questions about the loan led North Yorkshire Council to launch an investigation, which the authority said was "progressing well" earlier this year.

For swimming teacher, Ms Prior-Mckie, she says the reopening of the park now needed to be managed effectively.

“It needs to serve the community as well as the tourists. It has to be affordable,” she added.

“I really hope we find out what happened with those millions of pounds. It was the town’s money that went into getting the park open.”

Mums Amy and Demi want to see the new waterpark operator focus on affordability

Scarborough mothers Amy Mitchell and Demi Cammish also want to see the new operator focus on affordability.

Demi said: “It was good, I went a few times, but it was expensive. Especially with little ones – there were some slides they couldn’t go on because they were too short.”

Amy said it cost her, her partner and their two children £60 between them to get in – before allowing for the cost of food and drink.

“They definitely need to make it more affordable for families, and to promote it more,” she said.

“We had to pay the same as visitors from out of town which was annoying, as it was us that paid for the park – and now that money has been taken away."

John Sargent said he was never a fan of the park because of its ticket prices – and also questioned what happened to the £9m loan.

He said: “It needs fully investigating and the money needs to come back into Scarborough.”

Speaking last week, North Yorkshire Council’s Conservative deputy leader, Gareth Dadd, said: “We will now work with the preferred bidder who has experience of operating facilities of this nature and will continue to work towards opening in time for the summer season as we promised when we took this site on.”