As our readers will know from previous articles, progress for our town council on working with Freedom Leisure is depressingly slow. For reasons known only to FL, they think that running a leisure centre and swimming pool as a not-for-profit organisation is such a secretive operation that no one must know how they do it and for this reason have been demanding a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) from Rye Town Council (RTC) before handing over any management accounts.
RTC has agreed to this and have nominated the potential signatories which include William Coatesworth who is well qualified to go through the accounts in great detail and has generously volunteered to do so at no charge to the council.
For a short time, it looked as if all was set to go ahead and finally we would get definitive figures on costs and maybe even some suggestions on how they might be mitigated.
Until that is, Rother District Council Legal Services dropped a bombshell.
It would seem that once a public body such as RTC is in possession of the accounts it would be possible for anyone to issue a freedom of information (FOI) application which could possibly take precedence over the NDA and result in RTC being forced to provide others with the figures that Freedom Leisure are so keen to keep secret. There will surely be a way to overcome this but it is likely to add to the overall timescale.
In the meantime there have been various suggestions on what can be done to help reduce energy costs in the future and we are told by Rother that various alternative resources are being considered. This is all very well, but it is accepted that it does not solve the immediate problem and will, in any case, require a further capital investment which in current circumstances, and without help from central government, may well be unavailable.
In the meantime WCS, a company with considerable experience in managing the mechanics of safe swimming pool operation, produced a blog article that can be seen in full here. My Rye News colleague, Peter Connock who specialises in environmental matters and who has been in touch with WCS, summarises this as follows:
“At this stage I have no idea what, if any, mitigation actions Freedom Leisure have taken at the Rye site. But, at a simplistic level, it would seem that a combination of short to medium term external subsidies, combined with a viable capital investment programme, would be required to keep swimming facilities like Rye operating (and affordable for users).
“Given the promised ‘review’ in spring it would seem to be essential that an energy audit is completed urgently (if indeed it has not already been done) and an action programme developed to have any chance of our pool re-opening and remaining viable in the long-term.”
We will continue to keep a close watch on progress and will bring our readers regular updates.
Image Credits: Rye News library .
I am puzzled about RDC legal advice on non disclosures.When in local government in various authorities non disclosure documents were frequently used by the authority when reaching financial settlements and ‘pay offs’ for staff.
So one has to ask what has changed?
It is obviously against the spirit of the FL contract with Rother, to not only make publicly funded accounts inaccessible, but to threaten anyone seeing them with a non-disclosure agreement, a tactic used by slick lawyers and large organisations to silence whistleblowers.
This is completely inappropriate and unacceptable. Why the secrecy, it’s our money?
Meanwhile I understand the air conditioning continues to keep condensation at bay and the pool remains full, for security of the tiling and structure.
This is exasperating and so unnecessary.