On Monday night Ivan Horsfall Turner, the chief executive of Freedom Leisure, attended a meeting of Rother District Council’s Oversight and Scrutiny Committee, where the only item on the agenda was Rye swimming pool. A team of nine Rye Town councillors went to Bexhill to observe and scrutinise the committee in action, and to show Rother and Freedom Leisure how important the pool is to our town and surrounding area. In addition, a number of Rye citizens also went out on a cold and wet night to see and be seen!
Rye’s mayor, Andi Rivett, was invited to sit at the committee table and was the only person other than Rother councillors who was allowed to speak and ask questions.
First, an exhaustive presentation by Mr Horsfall Turner highlighted the desperate financial straits that the massive raise in energy prices has placed Freedom Leisure in and, he hoped, explain the company’s decision to first close Rye swimming pool until the new year in order to cut immediate costs.
Without public subsidy, he maintained that the whole Rye leisure complex was under threat from 2026 when Freedom Leisure’s contract with Rother for Rye (both the “dry” sports centre and the “wet” swimming pool) runs out. Mr Horsfall Turner said that the current predicted annual loss of £80,000 on the Rye centre had to be plugged by public money – from central government, Rother or Rye Town Council.
Andi Rivett asked three searching questions about the nature of the Freedom Leisure’s contract with Rother and also highlighted that the company’s recent initial public promises to keep the dry side of Rye Leisure Centre running with no changes to opening hours lasted only a matter of days. But Andi thanked Freedom Leisure for quickly reversing these cuts when they had been brought to Mr Horsfall Turner’s attention.
Andi stressed how much the swimming pool meant to the people of Rye, many of whom had collected and donated money to get it built two decades ago, and how Ryers would work hard to get it re-opened and kept open. He stressed Rye Town Council was keen to continue to work with both Rother and Freedom Leisure to come up with a workable solution and this was echoed by the other parties.
You can watch the webcast of the meeting here.
Image Credits: Kt bruce .
My main question, probably also asked by the mayor, is “How could Freedom Leisure walk away from a contract which still has four years to run and how much is the penalty payment for breaking the contract?” Hopefully, tens of thousands, or even millions of pounds!
Let’s hope for a straight answer!
Incalculable damage is about to be wrought on so many people who depend on the pool for much needed exercise and social interaction.
Essential for our babies and school children to be able to learn to swim, surrounded by water as Rye is!
Come on councillors – pool resources and solve this unbelievable situation!
Having watched the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on Monday 28th Nov, it seems pretty clear to me that all the local participants in this debate are cash strapped, that includes Freedom Leisure, Rye Town Council, Rother District Council and East Sussex County Council.
It should be self-evident that this facility should be substantially funded by the public sector, not the individuals using it. The benefits for mental and physical wellbeing are manifest, and will save money in other areas such as the NHS and social care. Schools have a legal obligation to teach swimming and clearly children should be able to swim for free.
We are not a poor country, far from it. There are political choices being made as to where our wealth goes. Over the last 12 years, there has been a systematic impoverishment of the public sector to the benefit of large corporations and a phenomenally wealthy minority of individuals. The hedge fund manager Chris Hohn pays himself £1.5 million per day, it beggars belief.
Meanwhile, Ivan Horsfall Turner, the managing director of Freedom Leisure, a not for profit company, has taken a pay cut. He concluded his presentation to Rother DC by stating that the single most necessary action by individuals is to write to their MP, either Sally-Ann Hart or Huw Merriman, depending on where they live, to request that the Government includes public sector leisure to be identified within ‘vulnerable sectors’ eligible for support beyond 1st April.
I would go much further than that. We need to start taxing wealth. The UK’s wealth gaps are now the highest on record. The UK is second only to the US when it comes to wealth gaps in advanced economies.
At the meeting, the Conservative Cllr Carl Maynard was calling for a ‘collegiate’ approach to resolving the pool funding problem, decrying ‘he said, she said’ finger pointing. But I disagree with him: the cash to save the pool cannot be pulled out of a magic hat. It needs to come from Central Government, and we need to be taxing wealth. It is nothing short of a disgrace that both our locals MPs fail to see this.