Gloucester GL1 leisure centre will see phased reopening

The leisure centre closed after charitable trust Aspire went into liquidation

A leisure centre which closed suddenly after its provider went into liquidation will reopen some facilities at the weekend.

Gloucester's GL1 leisure centre and Oxstalls park closed facilities last week, resulting in 150 job losses.

Initially, council chiefs felt it would be unlikely the facilities would reopen before September 2024.

It is now working on a phased plan to fully reopen both sites within the next few weeks.

Trustees said the charity faced "challenging conditions"

Leisure provision in Gloucester was thrown into disarray when Aspire Sports and Cultural Trust, which was running the buildings on behalf of Gloucester City Council, decided not to extend its contract with the authority.

The council will appoint an interim provider, which would see facilities opened on a staged basis over the next few weeks.

The council has asked the firm to guarantee job interviews to those who were made redundant by Aspire last week.

Facilities are likely to run on a reduced service initially.

The facilities at Oxstalls Sports Park will be the first to reopen

The city council has taken back possession of GL1, Oxtsalls tennis centre and the associated pitches.

The University of Gloucestershire has already taken control of the sports arena at Oxstalls and city chiefs are in talks with it about how they could reopen the site to community use.

The authority is still working through its plans, and said it will be likely to be able to reopen the external pitches for bookings and allow the park run's access to the car park.

The external pitches will be the first to open

It will then look at reopening the indoor facilities at Oxstalls and after that, will turn their attention to GL1 which is a slightly more complicated building to operate and manage due to the swimming pool.

By the time it reaches that stage, the council hopes the interim provider will be appointed to reopen the rest of the facilities.

Tom Beasley, CEO of Active Gloucestershire, is working with the council provide advice, guidance and support to users of the site.

"Next week we're going to have a drop-in event for users of the site, particularly focusing on clubs and organisations," said Mr Beasley.

He added that it is "essential" that the council gets the facilities open as soon as possible and encouraged sports clubs who need support to contact Active Gloucestershire.

A peaceful protest was held outside the GL1 leisure centre on Monday morning

Culture and leisure cabinet member Andy Lewis thanked officers for the work done so far in drawing up plans to reopen the facilities as soon as possible.

"We are working tirelessly to offer what we can until a new provider can be found," he said.

"We'll be contacting local clubs and regular bookers and we also want to reach out to former Aspire employees so we can ensure they're offered interviews."

Mr Lewis told the BBC that the council is doing its best to help customers who have lost money and said it is trying to track down financial information from Aspire.

Aspire Sports and Cultural Trust Board of Trustees said in a statement last week that the charity has faced some challenging conditions over the last few years and has done everything it can to meet those challenges.

"Having reached the end of our 15-year contract we hoped to continue for another year to ease the council's search for another operator," the charity said.

"We have now taken the incredibly difficult decision to wind up the charity and to go into liquidation as we believe we are no longer able to operate legally in the way that we would wish."