Kirklees Council in £4m bailout for leisure centres

Huddersfield's new leisure centre opened in May 2015 and cost the council £36m

A leisure company will get a £4m council bailout for "irrecoverable losses" incurred during lockdown.

Kirklees Active Leisure (KAL) has operated leisure facilities in Kirklees for the past 18 years - including most of the area's swimming pools.

The cash boost will stave off staff redundancies, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

But the GMB union said councils must take the "broken" system of outsourced leisure services back in-house.

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Huddersfield's new leisure centre opened in May 2015 at a cost to the council of £36m

Kirklees Active Leisure has lost virtually all its customer income during the coronavirus pandemic, with many staff furloughed, a council report said.

Pre-Covid, the company usually had a £16m annual turnover, and £500k reserves which they have aside for contingencies.

The council was told not supporting KAL would mean some of its 12 leisure facilities could close and the company would fold, so it agreed the cash boost to help avoid redundancies.

Councillor Graham Turner said the leisure sector has been particularly badly hit during the pandemic, with leisure facilities hard to clean and enforce social distancing.

"Social distancing is really difficult," he said.

"Some of the things they offer, such as TAG-X in Batley [a real-life active gaming experience] and Dare 2 Air [an inflatable theme park], are really not going to come back into use until we have either a vaccine or a change in policy when people are allowed to move more freely together."

It is thought leisure services will resume partially and gradually from August within social distancing guidelines, and KAL will update the council on its position as lockdown regulations change.

Andrew Aldwinkle of the GMB said the £4m bail-out, due to run until the end of the financial year, would "not be the last".

Children's soft play centres around the UK have closed permanently in the past few weeks, with hundreds more under threat, because they are difficult to clean or operate social distancing.