Gloucester City Council working on staged plan to reopen city’s leisure facilities

The council is working with local partners on a phased approach to providing the leisure services after the trust announced it was going into liquidation.

The plan will see the facilities opened on a phased basis over the next few weeks and is likely it will run on a reduced service initially.

The council is intending to bring in a new provider to take on the running of the services on a temporary basis until a long term solution is in place.

It is planned that all former Aspire employees recently made redundant will be given interviews by the new provider for any new roles, with the intention that as many as possible will be taken on.

Councillor Andy Lewis, cabinet member for Culture and Leisure, said: “Getting these facilities open and allowing our community access to them is our number one priority at the moment. We shared the concern and disappointment at the news that the Aspire Trust could no longer run the city’s leisure facilities. We are working tirelessly to offer what we can until a new provider can be found. We’ll be contacting local clubs and regular bookers and we also want to reach out to former Aspire employees so we can ensure they’re offered interviews.”

Prior to last week’s announcement the council had understood that the Trust would continue to operate until September 2024 and had begun looking for a new provider to take on the leisure services from this point.

The council was extremely disappointed when the Trust announced that it would not be able to continue despite the council committing to financial support that they had requested, of over £1.5 million since 2019.

A meeting is set to be organised with Active Gloucestershire to work with sports clubs and sporting bodies.

As more information is available it will be posted on the council’s website along with some FAQs to keep people up to date.  

Anyone who has any questions about the closure can email leisure@gloucester.gov.uk