DRASTIC cuts at a council's flagship leisure centre will be put to trustees this morning The Northern Echo has discovered.
A leaked report to managing trustees at the Spectrum Leisure Complex, in Willington, County Durham, outlines money-saving proposals which would concentrate all its sporting and other facilities in one building instead of the three used at present.
The report from Wear Valley District Council's leisure and marketing director, Paul Dobson, informs the trustees of a 'likely reduction in funding as the authority takes steps to reduce its overall spending by £700,000 over the next two years.
One casualty of the cuts would be the centre's 70m ski slope, which now has only a third of the 30,000 customers it had at its peak in the late 1980s.
Also lost would be the former Brancepeth Miners' Welfare Hall - known as Arrivals One - which houses squash courts, bars, a sunbed and sauna suite, bars, meeting rooms and a high-tech gymnasium.
It was handed over to the council for recreation and community use two years before the Spectrum opened in 1984.
Although no final decision has been taken on the centre's future, bosses are understood to be meeting the centre's 25 full and part-time staff on Monday. Some will be offered alternative posts.
But one source said yesterday: "The staff are devastated. Some of them have been at the Spectrum since it opened 16 years ago and it is a big part of their lives. They are like a family."
Rumours about cuts at the Spectrum's facilities have circulated for some months while the council carried out a detailed review of its leisure and other services.
The leisure department has already slashed its costs by £250,000 by closing its under-used Weardale Leisure Centre, at Eastgate, and cutting services at its other two sites at Glenholme, in Crook, and Woodhouse Close, in Bishop Auckland.
But Mr Dobson stressed that the authority was not turning its back on the leisure industry.
He said: "We are actively seeking funding from a range of sources for the provision of new services both at our centres and around the community, including Willington."
Council leader Olive Brown said: "If opportunities of funding from external sources are realised, then the provision to the local community will improve significantly.
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