27th April 2023 

Community leisure facilities are an important provision for local people to access affordable health and wellbeing activities.

With the cost of living crisis, and with the high costs of childcare, there are limited options for people with young children to access these vital services. The closure of the Malden Centre crèche is a failure to deliver affordable health and wellbeing leisure services for a section of the community who have been disproportionately impacted by increasing costs, and service closures.

All measures must be taken to explore additional funding to keep the crèche open.

In June 2022 we wrote to the council highlighting our concerns about the of capability of leisure centres, such as the Malden Centre, to handle increasing running costs, foreseeing the impact this could might services, staff and opening hours.

We asked if the council were taking any steps or action to mitigate any impact running cost increases may have on leisure facilities, but the response we got was unsatisfactory.

Half of the UK’s community swimming pools could close or face cuts to services within the next six months without more government support to tackle crippling energy bills.

It’s clear the Tories don’t care about delivering for communities.

We support this residents open letter.
Sign and read it here.