A new start for Oxford's Leisure Centres

3.16.00pm GMT Sat 28th Mar 2009

Oxford City Lib Dems expect to see radical improvements in the quality and range of the city's leisure services

Oxford's Leisure Centres are due for a relaunch next week with the start of a new partnership between the city council and the specialist charitable trust Fusion Leisure. Liberal Democrat spokesman for Leisure, Cllr Alan Armitage, said: "We are delighted that the council has finally decided to bring in a specialist leisure partner, and Fusion has an excellent track record. The Lib Dem group has been trying to get something like this to happen for years. We confidently expect the range and quality of the leisure services in Oxford to improve quickly and radically."

Following a "market testing" exercise lasting several months, the Executive Board accepted the council officers' advice that the case to bring in a partner was overwhelming on both financial and service quality grounds. Negotiations with the winner of the tendering process have gone smoothly, and the council's leisure staff will be transferred within days to work for the new partnership.

Fusion are expected to start changing the physical look of the leisure centres very quickly, with new logos and literature, re-modelled entrance areas, deep cleaning throughout, attention to minor repairs, improved changing rooms, and so forth. A programme to address the backlog of more major repairs to the centres has been agreed and will be starting this year.

Added Cllr Armitage: "I would encourage everybody in Oxford to visit one of the city's seven Leisure Centres in the next few months, and see the changes for themselves - particularly those who are not regular users. At a time when several private leisure operations in Oxford are becoming unaffordable, or having other difficulties, it is great that people in Oxford will not have to reduce the amount of exercise they can afford to take."