Tomorrow's meeting of Cornwall Council's Communities Overview & Scrutiny Committee is being asked to endorse a new "strategy for leisure" which, as we know, involves transferring county-owned sports centres to a new not-for-profit Trust.
A crucial question, which I'm sure will be asked at tomorrow's meeting, is whether or not the trust's business plan will include the sports centre at Camelford beyond the end of March 2012. A similar committee meeting last week voted 8-2 to recommend that Camelford should be included - but it is by no means certain that this view will prevail over the longer-term.
The decision on whether or not council tax payers continue to subsidise Camelford will effectively be taken, in secret, at one of the "Star Chamber" meetings involving only Cabinet members and senior officers. A rubber stamp will be applied at the scheduled Cabinet meeting next week.
There is no doubt that the Camelford sports centre is under-used, despite the great efforts made to increase membership in recent months. The facts of geography will not change and I don't see what anyone in Camelford can do to further increase the numbers. I'm not surprised that some County Hall cynics are now saying that the "use it or lose it" slogan which accompanied last year's council bail-out always had the feel of empty political rhetoric about it.
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