Council rejects call to take West Denton Pool back under control

A meeting at Newcastle Civic Centre heard the pool had been economically viable before the pandemic

Newcastle City Council has rejected calls to bring a swimming pool back under its control and re-open it.

West Denton Pool was closed by its operator Greenwich Leisure Ltd (GLL) during the first coronavirus lockdown last year.

Users fear it will not re-open and had called on the city council to step in.

Social enterprise organisation GLL was handed control of several council-run leisure facilities following budget cuts in recent years.

It announced in September the pool and two other leisure sites would remain closed indefinitely as it announced 35 job losses.

At a council meeting on Wednesday, Independent councillor Ian Donaldson, who represents Callerton and Throckley, warned a generation of youngsters could be left unable to swim.

His motion urging the council to "look towards taking back in-house the West Denton pool" failed as Labour councillors passed their own version calling on the government to provide funding to save publicly owned leisure centres.

Labour councillor Simon Barnes, of the Denton and Westerhope ward, said the pool had been financially viable before the pandemic and blamed its continued closure on ministers' failure to offer sufficient support.

However, his Labour colleague Linda Wright said she felt the "writing was on the wall" when GLL closed a training pool at the centre before Covid and that GLL had "grasped the opportunity" to shut the entire facility when the pandemic hit, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

GLL, a non-profit enterprise which runs sport and leisure facilities across the country, has said the closure of the pool was necessary because operating at reduced capacity due to social distancing meant income had been "impossible to recoup".

The council issued a £1.6m loan to GLL last year from an emergency Covid relief fund, but it was not sufficient to keep every GLL-run leisure facility in the city open.