LIEsure services, the jury's out

My letter to the local media over the recent dictate over leisure services here in Boston.

I am sure there will be plenty to write about as the wheels fall off this in coming months and years!




Sir,


I write to express in Public, the grave concerns I raised in Full Council last week relating to the Leisure services contract.

Unfortunately, this matter was not discussed in public, despite my motion to lift this restriction, equally concerning and more disturbing was the BBI flat rejection to allow debate of this matter.
Perhaps it can be explained as the prior weeks scrutiny meeting led to Cllr Dungworth
Walking out of a meeting in which he is portfolio holder, thereby delaying it 3 days.
This delay left little time to get answers ready for Mondays Full Council meeting where the final decision was to be made. The scrutiny meeting attended largely by the opposition was robust and raised a number of grave concerns relating to the appointment of the preferred bidder. A number of questions were raised and answers to these were produced at the Full council.
Under these circumstances, myself and members of the opposition felt it prudent not to appoint a contract whilst there were so many questionable aspects surrounding the preferred bidder, the full detail that could only be realised by those who bothered to attend the meeting and read up on the reports and supporting information.

I wish to make quite clear that I am very keen to see the training pool opened at once, however this contract does not allow for that.

I wish to see good value for money and a service we can be proud of, however initial investigations point to a very disappointing history from the preferred bidder
( See Mere Leisure Centre Grantham) and the BBI seem content to make do with what we can get!!

These arrangements land the Council with the liability of maintaining the PRSA and have allowed the BSI to write off over £3m of debit to the council. The tax payer has nothing to show for it…….scandalous.

These arrangements by their very nature, make the ability of you the taxpayer to complain to me the elected member in order to resolve issues that a private company are directly responsible for even more difficult than at present.

I am not convinced that there is enough power within the contract to manage robustly any shortfalls in service and standards, in the event that the preferred bidder fails to deliver what the taxpayer desires.

And finally I question, has the BBI, with its voting majority delivered to the borough another DABSI mess.
I hope not but I am not at all convinced.


Cllr David Owens
British National Party