Ripon leisure centre’s gym will finally open tomorrow, North Yorkshire Council said today.

Although the pool at the site on Dallamires Lane has been open since 2022, members have had to use a temporary gym in the car park due to ongoing problems caused by unstable land at the sinkhole-prone site.

But the gym at the leisure centre, which is now known as Active North Yorkshire Ripon – The Jack Laugher Centre, will open tomorrow — but group classes will continue to be held offsite at the Hugh Ripley Hall for now.

The indoor gym will include 36 stations for cardio and fixed resistance equipment, free weights and a reintroduced half rack in addition to an improved space for spin classes.

The cabin that hosted the temporary gym will be removed later this month once the gym equipment has been relocated.

North Yorkshire Council announced the development in a news release today, which added planned renovations to the remainder of the leisure centre, including external landscaping, should be complete by summer.

Once the centre fully reopens, it will offer 55 cardio and resistance training stations, group exercise studios, a sports hall, a health suite, new changing rooms, a meeting room and parking, alongside the 25-metre six-lane pool that has been in use since 2022.

Cllr Andrew Williams, a member of the council's Conservatives and Independents group, and who represents Ripon Minster and Moorside, said:

The gym will be unavailable for customers between 9am and 3pm tomorrow while the equipment is relocated.

The leisure centre, including the pool, will close on Saturday, February 22, at 6pm and reopen on Monday, February 24, at 6am to allow for the removal of the cabins.

A five-year saga of rising costs and delays

The scheme has doubled in cost and taken almost four years longer than expected.

Construction company Willmott Dixon was awarded a £10.2 million contract in November 2019 to complete work in 17 months. More than five years later, the cost has risen to £20 million.

The project involved building a new swimming pool area alongside the original 1995 leisure centre building.

But a sinkhole discovered near the old leisure centre entrance in September 2020 required £3.5 million remediation works.

A temporary gym was installed in the car park at a cost of £300,000 — a move Graham Swift, deputy leader of Harrogate Borough Council, described as “very exciting” at the time. 

The temporary gym opened in 2023 and remains in use. Fitness classes have been held off site at Hugh Ripley Hall.

The new part of the building, including the swimming pool, has been open throughout. It was opened by Ripon's Olympic gold medallist diver Jack Laugher, and the building renamed the Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre in his honour.

The cost rose again in May 2024, when North Yorkshire Council, which inherited the scheme a year earlier following the demise of Harrogate Borough Council, approved additional funding of £2 million to pump more grout into the void beneath the leisure centre building.

In its last update in November last year, the council said the refurbishment would be complete by summer this year.

The centre sits above a layer of gypsum – a water-soluble rock that leads to the formation of large underground caves that can collapse, and the identification of the void resulted in the need for complex ground stabilisation works at the centre.

Council deputy leader Cllr Gareth Dadd, whose responsibilities include property and finances, said ground stabilisation works were "necessary to make the leisure centre building safe so that it can be renovated and reopened for public use".