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A critical reading of the report used by Lewisham Council to determine the amount of sport facilities to be provided to the residents of Lewisham with the redevelopment of the land currently occupied by the Sundermead Estate.

Lewisham Council is actively promoting the redevelopment of the land that it owns in front of Lewisham Station and has now made publicly available the plan showing the size of the development and the amount of it to be destined to the new Sport and Leisure Centre that is supposed to replace the Ladywell Leisure Centre.

Unfortunately the size and prominence of the sport and leisure facility is greatly reduced when compared to the expectations generated by the Council's enthusiastic promotion of this plan that often referred to it as "flagship" wet and dry leisure centre.

This new centre was also supposed to replace not only the Ladywell Leisure Centre but also other lost sport space as the Sports Hall and Squash courts at Crofton.

Only 2 years ago the Council had widely distributed a brochure about sport and leisure in Lewisham and in it the Mayor wrote:

"I want this development to be the flagship leisure facility for this borough comprising two full swimming pools, one as a public swimming pool and one for structured lessons and training. We will look at incorporating a competition diving feature alongside the pools. The centre will have a contemporary fitness and aerobics gym suite, spectator and competition capacity and substantial community space for a variety of recreational purposes."

In spite of this great project of 2 years ago the Council is now proposing to build a centre with a single 25 m pool of either 6 or 8 lanes with no diving facilities and very limited dry space and justifies the shift of ambition with the Leisure Needs Analysis.

Though this document has been in the Council's possession since many months it is only now that it has been made available to the public.

What appears to have happened is that the Council instructed a consultant to do a "desk based research" with the purpose to determine a need based on data that was greatly distorted due to unjustified assumptions, unchallenged contradictions either included into the brief given or developed during the research. It also includes some plain mistakes due to evident lack of first hand experience of the area of the consultant.

The warped result that came out of this managed somehow to slip unobserved through the policy making process and become part of the Council's strategy in spite of its limited value.

This document decided that the pool will have a 2 km radius catchment area but gives no explanation why this particular distance was chosen and fails to consider that anybody outside the 2 km radius area would ever use it either.

In the past different measures have been used, often a 1.5 miles (2.4 km) measure that's the equivalent to 30 mins walk.The area of a 1.5 mile radius circle is 31% larger than that of a 2 km radius one.
A study by Sports England suggests that 1.6 km (about 1 mile) is the area where people are more likely to use a centre more frequently but this doesn't mean that people living some hundreds metres further will not use it, only that on average they'll use it a bit less.

Whatever the reason for this 2 km radius cut-off measure it would have been appreciated if it had included all that falls within this distance.
Unfortunately the consultant, doing this exercise has also decided to consider that Rushey Green and Crofton Park Wards will not be served by this leisure centre.
In spite of the fact that these two wards include densely populated areas falling within the 2 km distance from the site it seems that they were left out but no explanation is given to why.
Reading the report it seems that this is due to the fact that they are not part of the Central Neighbourhood.
At page 3 of the report the Borough is divided into 4 neighbourhoods with Rushey Green falling within the South and East Neighbourhood and Crofton Park within the South and West.
At page 8 the report states that the new sports and leisure centre at Sundermead will serve the Central and Northern Neighbourhoods and only the wards falling within these two neighbourhoods are then included in the calculation of the potential usage of the centre.

A colossal mistake made entirely out of paper.
Areas well within walking distance of the new centre have been left out and if this document had included a map this would have been greatly visible.

It also fails to consider that anybody from Greenwich would ever want to use it though the site is very close to the Borough's boundary.

It fails to consider that within the area there is a large Hospital and that a usage for therapeutic reasons should be added to the calculation.

Another failure is the lack of consideration given to the enormous increase of density of the area in the immediate vicinity of the new centre.
The Sundermead development will stand aside the Gateway development as well as the Thurston Road development.
Current plans include up to 1755 residential units and at Lewisham's average household size (2.7 inhabitants per household) that could bring up to an additional 4738 extra people living within a one minute walk form the centre. An enormous extra burden that simply wasn't considered.

The report also mentions the vicinity to the transport interchange but fails to add likely usage coming form this component of the scheme.

Where this document starts to be disturbing is where the consultant decides to leave the realm of arithmetic and a number of times he chooses to go as he says 'outside my remit' to provide support for his conclusions.

It predicts that Sports Halls accessible will be provided by the Building Schools for the Future programme but of course that is a prediction that might fail and it is not an acceptable justification for deciding to renounce to provide one with the "flagship" centre.
Why does the analysis assume schools under BSF will provide facilities, even when in some cases those facilities are only a 'possibility' in the eyes of the analysis?

The Sport Facility Review provided by Capita Consulting to Lewisham Council in 2005 said the only sports hall with truly public access is the Bridge in the extreme south. That the North (of the South Circular) lacks such a facility and a sports hall at Sundermead will fill the gap left by the closure of the Crofton Centre.

The Council is now deleting this consideration with this new report.

The diving facilities have been deleted with a stroke of the pen.

Here's from the report:

"Provision of specialist deep water for diving is not considered to be a need...

...the ASA acknowledge that Ladywell has not been used for diving for many years and there is no local coaching infrastructure to retain."

We can only disagree with this consideration as it is the negation of any ambition for an increased participation to swimming. Introducing a variety of activities, including diving, water-polo, synchronized swimming and any other water sport will involve more people in sport and create an environment where participation can grow rather than shrink for lack of opportunity.
It is also worth mentioning that the Ladywell Leisure Centre is the home of a scuba diving club where training and testing of gear to be used in the outdoors is weekly performed.

Through a series of miscalculations this report identifies a reduced "neighbourhood need" than existent and avoiding references to previous policies and aspirations of higher ambition suggests a conclusion that is not in the interest of the users of the Ladywell leisure Centre and the residents of central Lewisham as well as the wider Borough.

Its recommendations do not lead to increased participation to sport and active recreation, health and better social cohesion.

The idea of a flagship centre for the borough, that was central to the Council's policy as presented to the public evidently wasn't at all part the brief for this consultant' job.

The Council is now consulting on this proposal and we recommend the scrapping of this report to allow plans for a provision that can replace the Ladywell Leisure Centre rather than building a greatly undersized sport centre that will result in a damage to the Borough.

Update:  Lewisham Council has accepted some of the shortcomings of their analysis and is currently reviewing its content.You can either download the Leisure Need Report from the Council's website at this link.

or the archived copy from our website here.