Mo, Nov 14, 2005Lewisham Council bosses fail maths test
Some weeks ago we submitted to Lewisham Council a question about the Sport Facility Calculator that Sport England has developed and made available online.After reading the answer given at last Council Meeting, there's one recommendation that we need to give to the council's bosses:
Go Back To School!
According to the Council,
...Currently Lewisham falls marginally short of recommended provision with regard to pool space...
According to our calculation on official data, Lewisham is short of 31.5% of the recommended provision.
Is that marginal?
But at the Council they know that they need to do better.
That's what they forecast for the future:
...However, by 2010 when the new provision is completed at Forest Hill, Sundermead and Wavelengths the Borough will exceed the recommended figure of 2715.54 m2 by some considerable margin...
Really?
We thought that it was better to check if that was correct.
Though there are some unknown factors in the future provision like the size of the lane pool at Wavelenghts and the size of the future provision in Forest Hill (This answer speaks of a "new provision at Forest Hill". Has that been decided already?), we can know the range of the planned provision and calculate a minimum and a maximum.
According to our calculations, in the best of options (Forest Hill refurbished and a 6 lanes pool at Wavelenghts) the Council's plan will provide 89% of the recommended provision for the current population.
In the worst of options (Forest Hill reduced to one pool and a 4 lane pool added to Wavelenght) Lewisham will have 81% of the recommended provision.
Again, provision for the current population.
But Lewisham is growing!
Developments are springing up like mushrooms and the population is set to increase significantly.
To do our calculations we used the GLA projections and the result is that the planned provision will be between 81% and 73% of the recommended provision for the future population of Lewisham.
Unless the Ladywell Leisure Centre stays open of course. ...read more...