Protesters gathered at Liverpool Town Hall ahead of the budget meeting on Wednesday. This follows the council’s plans to hand over the control of two leisure centres to third parties. The leisure centres are Park Road and Everton leisure centres.
This is due to Liverpool City Council’s lack of funding and means they cannot continue to run the two Lifestyles sites.
The hand-over to a third-party company will mean the two sites will no longer be publicly-owned.
This led to a protest before the budget meeting in Town Hall where the public expressed their concerns over the possible closure of the leisure centres. Councillor Carl Cashman, Liverpool Lib Dem leader, was in attendance to support the protesters.
He said: “This process should have been more consultative and because that hasn’t happened there hasn’t been any community or prior councillor input. We’ve seen this happen with this council over the last five years.
“Ultimately, we’ve got a plan from a Labour council that is enforced by a Tory government but born out of incompetence and an inability to add its sums up.”
Councillor Nick Small, Labour, also spoke about the possibility of closing the two sites, saying: “They are not closing the leisure centre they are looking at transferring two loss-making leisure centres there is currently a public consultation in the works. It’ll be better value for taxpayers’ money.
“Want to make public groups with the potential help from the national lottery. It’ll mean that public services much closer to the community letting them have more say in the services.”
If there is not a buyer for the two sites this will result in closures, at this stage, there is no deadline for when this needs to happen. This means that the future of Everton Park and Park Road Lifestyles is undetermined.
Additional reporting: Kate Farley
Featured image (c) Amy Coulson
