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| . | p5 TIRED OF WAITING by Ken WorpoleIt’s official: ‘The Clissold is the worst thing that has ever happened to Sport England. It was even worse than Wembley’, an anonymous source at Sport England told Building magazine (22 June 2001). As the opening of Clissold Leisure Centre is delayed yet again - so far this year local residents have been promised ‘April’, ‘Before the school holidays’, ‘August’, and now ‘Unlikely to open until the autumn’ - questions are at last being asked outside Hackney as to what has gone so disastrously wrong. Clissold Leisure Centre was erected on the site of the old Stoke Newington Pool & Baths, as a result of a successful lottery bid. In 1994 when the scheme was conceived, the new centre was to have cost £7 million. Seven years later the bill is now over £27 million, of which Hackney rate-payers have had to find a cool £16.7 million to underwrite the costs of finishing it. That’s £16.7 million that the Council didn’t have or rather they had to find by closing down many other community services, parks budgets and leisure buildings such as Haggerston Pool. Typically, all the senior Council officers who put this bid together, commissioned the architects, and set the project in motion have long moved on to higher things, leaving others to clear up the mess they left behind and pay the bills. The vast debts stockpiled by this out-of-control building project are one of the reasons why the new Labour Council went cap in hand yet again to the government last month asking to be bailed out, and why the government is once again seriously considering taking control over the borough under the Local Government Act of 1999 for failing ‘to ensure the provision of adequate services’. Another freeze on all new spending may even mean that the final touches to the Leisure Centre could be halted, thus delaying the opening even further. Although most of the building work is now completed, there are apparently still problems in controlling the quality of the water - black algae has been seen on test runs and a large glass screen in the entrance foyer is causing problems in getting a fire rating. But even when these details are solved - and the taxi meter keeps ticking away, clocking up extra tens of thousands of pounds every month - final decisions have still to be made about the running of the centre, and what pricing and programming policies are to be adopted. As people know, public consultation and accountability went out the window years ago in Hackney, so all these crucial decisions are being made behind closed doors. It should be remembered that originally the project was hailed as a model of working with the community, and a vital tool in combating social exclusion. Today those grandiloquent claims are forgotten. A private firm called Leisure Connections has apparently won the contract to run Clissold Leisure Centre (and most of the Council’s other leisure facilities), though no public announcement to that effect has yet been made, let alone details provided. Those who remember that New Labour won the general election on the promise to improve public services will realise that this will be mostly achieved by risking public money to build facilities, and then handing them over to the private sector to manage as they decide best: the much loved Railtrack model. This is the way forward in Hackney, for sure. However, since architectural experts are agreed that the unique specification and design of Clissold Leisure Centre is likely to mean higher than average maintenance costs, then expect to see high ticket prices when it finally opens, fewer concessionary rates, furious rows when the attendance figures and the income fail to stack up, public faIlings out between Council and Private Contractor about subsidy levels, and further great wads of public money being poured in to keep the Centre open - while leisure facilities in other parts of the borough wither on the vine. The architects have designed a Rolls Royce - and there is every reason why Hackney people deserve Rolls Royces - but it has been built in a borough that cannot even maintain a pushbike. Expect more tears. Ken Worpole lives locally writes about urban and social policy issues, and maintains a website www.worpole.dircon.co.uk |
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