Caerphilly town is set to get a new £10.5 million leisure centre after councillors agreed initial plans for the development.
The current leisure centre, near Virginia Park, will be replaced as part of the redevelopment of the former St Ilan School site.
Cllr Harry Andrews, leader of the council said he welcomed the plans for a new centre, which would have a swimming pool, running track, tennis courts and multi-use games areas.
He said: “The provision of leisure facilities plays a key role in helping to promote the importance of health and wellbeing, and as a council we are fully committed to making investments in this important area.”
The report on the proposals, which councillors considered earlier this week, estimates that repairing the 40-year-old building would cost £934,000.
However the plans to replace the ageing building have drawn criticism from Plaid Cymru councillor James Fussell.
Cllr Fussell, who represents the nearby St Martins ward, said he understood planned new leisure centre would be sited where Ysgol Gymreag Caerffili is.
He said: “What is proposed is a relocating of the Rec and a like-for-like development on the old Ysgol Gymreag Caerffili site, which in turn is to move into one half of the St Ilan site.
“The area was allocated, in the new school proposal as an open play area suitable for the school to have tennis, or any other sport playable in all weathers, and offer an overspill car park. The whole of the school site would be available to after school use by the public just like St Martin’s and St Cenydd.
“No additional facilities are on offer and what is more of a problem will be the sale of the former Rec site to housing, which will no doubt include the golf course, so an estimated 500 plus houses with an entry exit onto an already congested town road infrastructure.”
Cllr David Poole, cabinet member for community and leisure services, said: “The existing Caerphilly Leisure Centre building already welcomes in excess of 285,000 visitors through its doors every year, and should these proposals be accepted, I am confident that this development project would help us to further increase participation in sports and fitness activity in the Caerphilly basin area and beyond.”
The cost of the new leisure centre, plus associated outdoor facilities, is estimated at around £10.5m.
The council plans to draw £3m of that from funding already in place for the new school, subject to Welsh Government approval, and the remaining £7.5m through borrowing.
Correction – January 28, 2013 : Cllr James Fussell has contacted Caerphilly Observer to clarify there are currently no plans for a housing development on the site of Caerphilly Leisure Centre or the nearby golf course.
The new leisure centre could be open by 2015.
So much for the Labour party`s support for the Welsh language, what a track record, they closed the Miners Hospital replaced it with a cottage hospital in Ystrad with no A and E and now they are going to ruin Welsh medium education in the area, we`d have had better treatment if we`d lost to the Germans in 1940.
The Welsh Language is in decline, this is a statistical fact, and the continual bleating of the Free Wales Nationalist is a lost cause. The cost to bow to extremists of any sort is public money ill spent.
Forget it!!!.
nice to see a new lesiure centre being built, are they have a diving pit too?