Catmose College Leisure facilites

The leisure centre at Catmose College was first built as part of a community offer at the school including a swimming pool, art gallery, café, family centre and a centre for young adults with learning difficulties. However, after it was built, Catmose College became an academy and legally took ownership of all the buildings on its site.  Over the years all the community offer, except the swimming pool and leisure centre, was either closed by the school or moved elsewhere. 

The Council is not legally allowed to let a contract for which there is no budget and therefore the contract has not been let.  Catmose College owns the building and may choose to allow community access at some point.  The leisure centre continues to be used by the school for curriculum and extra-curricular activities.

Time Line 

• 2021: Swimming pool closed.  It needed replacing and neither RCC nor the school had sufficient funds to build a new pool. 
• 2021: Catmose College decided it did not want to continue to run the leisure centre for community use.
• 2021: RCC let a contract, at nil cost to the Council, to run the community aspects of the leisure centre.  The school retained ownership and access for school use.
• 2023: The contract was at an end and was re-tendered on a nil cost basis.  No tenders were received.
• 2023:The Conservative/Independent coalition cabinet announced the Leisure Centre would close due to no tenders being received but then did a U Turn, re-tendered and extended the existing contract by up to 2 years
• 2024 (February): RCC set its budget with no money allocated for subsidising a private company to run the leisure centre.
• 2024 (March): The tender process resulted in 2 companies submitting compliant tenders but neither were nil cost.  RCC’s Council requested Cabinet to find the resource to fund the contract.
• 2024 (April): The Lib Dem cabinet put forward what was, in our view, the only option to fund the private company to run the leisure centre.  The option was to move the money allocated for climate change and flood relief to leisure services.  As Lib Dems we did not want to put this forward but felt we had no choice. Council did not accept this proposal.