Knaresborough’s new £17.5 million leisure and wellness centre will open on December 11.

The centre includes a six-lane 25-metre pool, a leisure pool with flume and a 60-station fitness suite.

There is also a studio for group fitness classes, a bespoke group cycling studio, sauna and steam rooms, a café and an outdoor children’s play area.

The centre has been developed next to the old Knaresborough Pool, which was built in 1990 and last refurbished 20 years ago.

Work on the exterior of the site.

The changing room area.

Cllr Simon Myers, North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for culture and leisure, said:

“I am delighted that we have an opening date for this exciting new leisure provision for Knaresborough – it’s a perfect Christmas gift for the town.

“The local community had long outgrown the old pool – there was a call for fitness provision as well as spaces for classes and post workout relaxation spaces.

“By shifting the service offer from conventional swimming pool provision to a community health and wellbeing service we aim to help people move more, live well, feel great and reduce the proportion of the population that is physically inactive.”

The project is part of a wider £47.9 million investment in leisure provision, including the recently completed refurbishment of Harrogate Leisure and Wellness Centre and the Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre in Ripon.

All the centres are managed day-to-day by Brimhams Active, the council’s health and wellbeing company.

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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.

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New photos have shown Knaresborough’s £17 million leisure centre taking shape.

Knaresborough Leisure and Wellness Centre is due to open in November. It will replace Knaresborough Pool, which closed a month ago.

Like the old site, it will have a pool and a fun pool with a slide. But unlike the old site it will also have a a studio, gym, steam room and sauna.

Councillors were given a tour of the site today.

Matt Walker, a Liberal Democrat on Knaresborough Town Council and North Yorkshire Council, shared some photos on his Twitter account. He said:

“It’s a huge investment for the town with lots more facilities than the previous pool.”

Cllr Walker added green technology would save about 50% of the running costs and 85% of the old pool will be recycled after demolition.

The children’s playground and zip wire is due to be reinstated.

The new sauna

The steam room

The site is due to open in November.

The leisure centre will be run by Brimhams Active, a leisure company controlled by North Yorkshire Council.

Brimhams reopened the former Harrogate Hydro as Harrogate Leisure and Wellness Centre this month.

Look out for an interview with Mark Tweedie, the managing director of Brimhams Active, this weekend.

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Four weeks of roadworks will begin in central Knaresborough this weekend as Northern Powergrid installs new electricity cables.

The work will take place on King James Road and York Place from Saturday, May 27.

With a trench set to be dug in the carriageway on King James Road, its junction with York Road will be closed until Monday, June 5.

Temporary three-way traffic lights will be installed, with a barrier around a temporary footpath, at the junction.

Work will also be carried out on the pavement between the pedestrian crossing and the footpath towards the cemetery.

From June 5, the junction will be reopened under four-way temporary lights until the expected completion date of Tuesday, June 20.

Northern Powergrid’s connections delivery project engineer Richard Appleyard said:

“Investment work is vital to connect customers to our network and although unavoidable, we do appreciate it can be very disruptive and every effort will be made to keep this disruption to a minimum.

“Our teams will endeavour to ensure access is maintained to properties in the area at all times and we thank local residents and the local community for their patience and co-operation whilst the connection work takes place.”

The company said it had notified nearby customers, including King James’s School and Knaresborough Swimming Pool, about the plans.

The new Knaresborough Leisure and Wellness Centre is currently under construction adjacent to the existing swimming pool, with work expected to continue until its opening date in November. The old pool is set to be closed in September for the final phase of the project.

For more information about the road closures, contact Northern Powergrid on 0800 011 3332 or email generalenquiries@northernpowergrid.com.

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A new council is set to take over in the Harrogate district next week.

Both Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council will make way for North Yorkshire Council on April 1.

Brimhams Active, an arms length company owned by Harrogate Borough Council, currently runs leisure services in the district.

In this article, we explain what will happen to leisure facilities under the new North Yorkshire Council.

Who currently runs leisure facilities in the district?

Currently, Brimhams Active operates leisure facilities in the Harrogate district.

The company was set up in August 2020 to run swimming pools and leisure centres.

This includes Harrogate Hydro, Knaresborough Pool, Starbeck Baths and the Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre in Ripon.

Brimhams Active has also overseen major projects, such as the redevelopment of the Harrogate Hydro swimming pool and the construction of new facilities in Ripon and Knaresborough.

What will happen under the new council?

As of April 1, Brimhams Active will transfer over to North Yorkshire Council.

The new council will add Selby’s leisure services to the Brimhams Active portfolio from September 2024.

North Yorkshire Council will also undertake a £120,000 review of leisure services with the aim of creating a countywide model for delivering leisure and sport by 2027.

While people who use the centres may not see an immediate change, the ownership of the company will be different.

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In this article, which is part of a series on the 12 stories in the Harrogate district that shaped 2022, we look at the district’s ongoing multi-million pound leisure projects.

Spades hit the ground this year as an overhaul of leisure services in the district continued.

Since taking over the reigns of facilities in 2021, Brimhams Active has slowly pressed on with shaping a new look leisure offering.

Harrogate Borough Council is spending more than £40 million on new pools in Ripon and Knaresborough and on a major refurbishment of The Hydro in Harrogate.

Those projects made progress this year, although the saga over Ripon’s ground instability coloured the debate over whether the site was suitable for a new pool.

The investment in leisure is the largest the district has seen.

In Harrogate, the Hydro will be expanded and in Knaresborough an entirely new facility will be built.

Speaking to the Stray Ferret in March, Mark Tweedie, director of Brimhams, said he expects the transition to the new pool to be “seamless”.

Both projects are set to cost around £28 million.

Delays and cost hikes

But, while they represent ambitious schemes, they have not been plain sailing.

The reopening of the Hydro has been delayed and is set to cost more than originally planned.

This month the borough council revealed it is set to cost £12.8 million – £1 million more than planned.

Cllr Stanley Lumley, Cllr Phil Ireland, Alliance Leisure business development manager Sean Nolan and ISG project manager Julian Donnelly outside the Knaresborough Leisure Centre construction.

Meanwhile, the facility is not expected to reopen until the summer.

The opening of a gym at Ripon has also been beset by delays as the council carries out ground stability work.

On top of that, a temporary gym which is expected to be put in place during the works will not arrive until the new year.

Despite the issues in Ripon, the decision to build on the site was defended by Cllr Stan Lumley, cabinet member for culture, tourism and sport at the borough council, amid concern over the future of the centre due to instability.

While the projects may be ambitious, the revolution over leisure in the district is taking time to come to fruition.

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Swimming pools in the Harrogate district have received a national accreditation from Swim England.

The Water Wellbeing accreditation aims to transform community swimming pool into places for health, wellbeing and rehabilitation.

The award has been granted to Starbeck Baths, the Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre, Knaresborough Swimming Pool and Nidderdale Pool and Leisure Centre.

Brimhams Active, which runs the facilities, carried out changes to ensure all pools are accessible, inclusive and inviting to the local community in order to achieve the accreditation.

Mark Tweedie, managing director of Brimhams Active, said: 

“I’m delighted that through the hard work and dedication of the Brimhams Active team, with the support of Swim England, we have achieved Swim England’s Water Wellbeing accreditation at our facilities.

“Inactivity and the determinants of poor health adversely impact on thousands of people in our communities. Our mission is to help address this by supporting people to move more, live well and feel great, and to do this we are creating an inclusive, holistic, health and wellbeing focused service offer.”

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As part of the accreditation, exercise referral instructors have received training to deliver Swim England’s aquatic activity for health programme, which allows the team to deliver pool-based group exercise for people living with long term health conditions.

Meanwhile, swimming will be able to lead adult swimming lessons for people with health conditions, and all customer facing members of the team have had additional customer experience training, with a focus on inclusivity.

Andrew Power, Swim England’s water wellbeing specialist, said: 

“Swim England have been supporting Brimhams Active this past year across a number of key areas, in order to maximise the long term sustainability and growth of their aquatic assets.

“It has been an absolute pleasure to work with the Brimhams Active team at all levels, who have shown total commitment to the accreditation process and have gone beyond what was expected of them in doing so.

“I look forward to seeing the impact of this work and benefits to the local community, particularly around improved health and wellbeing for years to come.”

The reopening of Harrogate Hydro has been delayed until summer next year.

The swimming pool and leisure centre closed in April for an £11.8 million refurbishment.

At the time, the pool hall and changing rooms were due to re-open next month and the ‘dry side’ activity space was expected to welcome visitors in April.

The pool opening date was later pushed back until May. But in a post on its Facebook page this week the venue said it is now due to open in summer.

The facility will get a two-storey extension as well as a new entrance, cafe and reception area and sauna and steam suite.

There will also be new diving board equipment, a new fitness suite and the changing areas will be upgraded.

How the Hydro is looking.

The Hydro, which is run by Harrogate Borough Council-controlled leisure company Brimhams Active, said in its Facebook post that work was “well underway”. It added:

“As is often the case when refurbishing an existing building, we have discovered some additional areas of work that could only have come to light when the building was closed and a strip-out of the internal fabric had taken place.

“This includes some improvements to the fire protection of the steel frame, replacement of corroded steelwork, replacement of soffit boarding, and resolution of air leakage and heat loss between the roof and the external walls. As well as some work to ensure the building conforms to the latest legislation and is as energy-efficient as possible.

“Despite everything being done to minimise delays to the project, we now anticipate opening our doors once again next summer (date TBC). But by carrying out the work now, we will be able to ensure people across the Harrogate district can keep fit and active for many years to come.”

The Stray Ferret has asked the council if the “additional areas of work” will mean the cost of the project has risen. We have not received a response at the time of publication.

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One person commented in response on Facebook about the length of time Harrogate swimmers would have to travel to Ripon to use another council pool:

“This is going to be well over a year swimmers in the north of the town have been without a pool, and ‘summer (tbc)’ isn’t inspiring me with a lot of confidence.

“Driving to Ripon (actually quicker than trying to get through traffic to Starbeck or Knaresborough) isn’t a particularly appealing prospect on a foggy/icy winter morning, nor is it very green.”

Another person said the wait would be worth it.

“Ah well a least another seven months travelling through to Ripon. If it’s going to be as good as Ripon, really looking forward to it reopening.”

The council, which will be abolished in April, is also spending £17 million on a new leisure centre in Knaresborough, which will have a six-lane swimming pool, health spa and fitness studios.

It is being built behind the existing Knaresborough Pool which will be demolished.

Brimhams Active has defended a decision to reduce adult only swim sessions at Knaresborough pool during the school holidays.

The company, which operates Harrogate Borough Council’s leisure facilities, sets the timetables for sessions at the pool on King James Road.

One residents told the Stray Ferret that she was disappointed that some of adult only sessions on a Tuesday and Friday had been cancelled.

She said:

“I am very disappointed that both the Tuesday and Friday one hour 9-10am swims for ‘adults only’ have been cancelled during the school holidays. 

“In the past, the Tuesday session has been kept and this was accepted, but both being removed is particularly unfair for the elderly who do not wish to (or feel unable to) swim when there are boisterous children in the pool.”

A spokesperson for Brimhams Active said the change in the timetable was temporary and that the pool sees more demand during the holidays.

They said:

“Brimhams Active is committed to delivering a comprehensive and inclusive pool programme at all of our venues. We endeavour to provide opportunities for all Harrogate residents to enjoy our facilities throughout the year. Our programmes are subject to change and are often amended to reflect seasonal demand.

“Throughout the school holiday period, Brimhams Active aims to provide additional swimming lesson opportunities for the children of our district in order to support improved attainment levels.

“This additional opportunity for children, forms a fundamental aspect of our commitment to the health and wellbeing of our local communities and our duty to support education around water safety and confidence in water.

“While this temporary change in our programming has a short term impact on our standard (term time) timetables, alternative adults only sessions are available alongside several opportunities for lane swimming throughout the day”

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The Hydro swimming pool in Harrogate will close for nine months on Friday ahead of a £11.8m refurbishment.

The facility will get a two-storey extension as well as a new entrance, cafe and reception area.

There will also be new diving board equipment, a new fitness suite and the changing areas will be upgraded.

A computer generated image of how the Hydro will look.

The existing gas boilers will be replaced with air source heat pumps and 250 solar panels, as well as new metering and energy monitoring and control systems.

The pool is run by Brimhams Active on behalf of Harrogate Borough Council.

It means until January, the nearest available council-run pools will be in Starbeck, Knaresborough, Patelely Bridge and Ripon. Opening times are available on the Brimhams Active website.

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The project will be carried out in phases, with the refurbished pool hall and changing rooms re-opening in January 2023 and the ‘dry side’ activity space by April 2023.

How the new Knaresborough Pool will look.

Work to build the new Knaresborough Pool will start on April 26. The current facility will remain open.

Wallace Sampson, Harrogate Borough Council’s chief executive, said:

“This investment at both the Hydro in Harrogate and a new facility in Knaresborough follows our investment at the Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre in Ripon and shows our commitment to providing first-class leisure facilities for Harrogate district residents.”