Leisure centre visitors in Harrogate, Ripon and Knaresborough have been as likely to wear hard hats as swimming costumes in recent years.
All three sites have undergone lengthy projects to refurbish or replace council-owned facilities.
Those in charge probably wish they too had hard hats to protect themselves from the flak caused by soaring costs and delays. The nine-month delay refurbishing the former Harrogate Hydro meant it reopened two days before the end of the school summer holidays.
But finally there is something to cheer.
The new Harrogate Leisure and Wellness Centre has already attracted almost 2,000 members. It has an eight-lane pool and diving boards, a well-equipped gym twice the size of its previous incarnation and three plush exercise studios.
The pool at Harrogate.
One of three studios at Harrogate.
Elsewhere, the partially-open Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre will eventually provide Ripon with a gym and pool on the same site; Knaresborough is weeks away from a new leisure centre and the gym at Pateley Bridge has been refurbished.
Mark Tweedie, managing director of Brimhams Active, the council-owned leisure company that runs the sites, admits the delays have been frustrating but says the benefits of the £46 million investment will soon be felt across the district. He says:
“We will have an estate that will be the envy of North Yorkshire. The investment that’s gone in is unprecedented and significant.”
Harrogate Leisure and Wellness Centre is certainly a cut above the average council leisure centre.
Monthly membership, which provides unlimited access to gyms, pools and classes at all Brimhams sites, is £44.95. That isn’t as cheap as Pure Gym or Coach Gyms but they haven’t got pools. Gym-only Brimhams membership is £33.
Mr Tweedie argues they also don’t have the same focus on community health as Brimhams, which he says is “reinventing conventional leisure services to a more impactful, person-centred health and wellbeing service”.
To underline this, the rather soulless ‘leisure and wellness’ moniker has been slapped across the names of all its sites.
Sinkhole saga
But although Harrogate is fully open, work continues elsewhere.
Ripon, which was the first to reopen as the Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre in March last year, appears locked in some sort of sinkhole groundhog day of never-ending work on a “void” beneath the old part of the site, which remains closed.
The Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre
Remedial work is expected to continue until spring. Mr Tweedie says the centre is “looking to reopen the first floor gym in April next year” with the ground floor studio following in summer.
In the meantime, customers will continue to use the temporary gym in the car park and attend group classes at Hugh Ripley Hall in the city centre.
Knaresborough has been less troublesome than Ripon and Harrogate, although it might not seem like it to residents who currently have nowhere in town to swim since the old pool closed a few weeks ago.
How the Knaresborough site will look.
Delays meant the seamless transition from old pool to new site didn’t quite happen, but from November people will have access to a six-lane pool, a fun pool with a slide, plus — for the first time — a studio, gym, steam room and sauna.
While others get upgrades, the beautiful Starbeck Baths feels like the forgotten ugly sister. Rumours abound the Victorian pool will be closed and Mr Tweedie’s comments don’t provide much succour:
“The council is reviewing all its leisure sites at the moment. That’s a natural process because it’s just been formed as a unitary council. It will ask for evidence on how its sites perform and the opportunities for development.”
Starbeck Baths
The audit will be followed by a strategy. Does he think Starbeck Baths will still exist in 10 years?
“That’s a decision for councillors. But what I can say is there has been no feedback to me about planning to close Starbeck.”
Membership figures
Brimhams, which employs the full-time equivalent of about 160 staff and has a turnover of £8.4 million, was set up by Harrogate Borough Council in August 2021. But it has been run by the new North Yorkshire Council since April.
Mr Tweedie says Brimhams “was set up to be commercially effective but also to deliver better health outcomes for the community”.
The council currently provides a £1.7 million annual subsidy, which is due to reduce to £1.2 million when the new centres are complete.
The early commercial signs at Harrogate are encouraging. Membership was 600 when the Hydro closed. The new site has 1,800 members — above the 1,750 target for the end of the month.
Ripon, which has less gym competition than Harrogate, has 1,200 members and Nidderdale has 700.
When we last interviewed Mr Tweedie staff shortages was a huge issue but he says this has eased.
Mark Tweedie outside the Harrogate site.
Brimhams is the only council-owned trading company in North Yorkshire. A private company called Everyone Active provides services in Ryedale and Scarborough; Richmond Leisure Trust runs facilities in Richmond and a charity called Inspiring Healthy Lifestyles oversees sites in Selby. The former district councils in Craven and Hambleton ran leisure sites.
Brimhams is due to take control of Selby’s services, which includes Selby Leisure Centre and Tadcaster Leisure Centre, in September next year.
That decision appeared to be a vote of confidence in the Brimhams model but uncertainty remains about how leisure services will be managed long-term in the county once North Yorkshire Council has completed its review.
But in the short-term, it’s all about growing membership — and getting Knaresborough and Ripon sorted.
Read more:
- Ripon leisure centre halts price increase due to ongoing work
- Harrogate Hydro delay will see no change in £13.5m project budget, says council