important community news and information about the current situation in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
It’s amazing that a temporary building can look this good, air conditioning, wheelchair access, showers and changing facilities etc. Things are coming along well.
The rest of our leisure facilities face a long haul back to normal, but a good opportunity to make improvements along the way. Everyone will remember that photo of the flooded entrance, now a hive of building activity.
A temporary gym and fitness suite with thirty fitness stations is rising from the flood water of our flagship sports centre, just five weeks after loss adjustors described the damage as catastrophic.
Ou customers had to evacuate leisure@cheltenham on Friday 20 July as flood water began pouring from the nearby lake into the centre. Fire services had to close off the immediate area because of the threat of chemical explosion as gas tanks. At its highest, the torrent of water reached levels of five feet across the leisure centre’s ground floor. After a 24-hour operation to pump out water, fire crews made the building safe for council staff to begin assessing the damage.
Whilst our own leisure facilities are being repaired we know there are lots of you out there desperate for a good local pool. Well, the lido re-opens today after an extensive refit. It’s a wonderful piece of local history and well worth supporting.
As it says on the lido website:
The lido is a great day out in the heart of Cheltenham, on the edge of the Cotswolds. It is a children’s paradise with slides, a children’s pool and a paddling pool. Our 50 metre pool is also an ideal place to train, two lanes are reserved most days.
We wish them every success.
We’ve now got some great news about progress at our flood devastated leisure facilities…
Right now we have a contractor on the site building some temporary premises. We’re planning a thirty station fitness suite and a fitness studio where a selection of classes and courses can be held. The facilities will be fully air conditioned, have shower and changing accommodation and have disability access. It will all take a few weeks to complete, but work is in progress.
Sonia Phillips, our assistant director for health and wellbeing said:
We still await a date from the contractor when the temporary premises will be handed over to us, however it is likely that the facility will be available for use towards the end of September. We will do our best to update and inform our customers of all developments, particularly when a confirmed opening date is known. In the meantime, a specialist contractor has now commenced with the initial strip-out work at centre. This is a major operation which includes the removal of all contaminated debris from the site.
and Anne Regan the cabinet member for safer and stronger communities added:
I would like to thank all those who have expressed their support to the centre during recent weeks and give my assurance that we are doing everything we can to minimise the period of disruption that the closure has caused. leisure@cheltenham serves more than 111,000 residents so I am pleased that we will shortly have facilities for people to use.
This really positive news follows the recent visit of James Schiro, Zurich Global’s chief executive to show his support and oversee the insurance investigation.
Scenes like this will return…
Just this afternoon, Jim Schiro the chief executive of Zurich Global came to see Cheltenham’s flood damaged leisure facilities for himself. Zurich are the council’s insurer, and Jim Schiro came over from America especially to see how the facilities had suffered. Earlier in the day he visited the Zurich office at The Grange in Cheltenham, itself badly affected.
Graham Annand Zurich’s major loss manager and Andrew North the council’s chief executive accompany Jim Schiro.
Jim Schiro looking down on the flood damage as the media look on.
Everyone remembers this image from less than three weeks ago.
Lots of people need a helping hand, some need help with flood fund applications and everyone has a story to tell. Right now we have teams of surveyors auditing flood damaged properties in Cheltenham and Tewkesbury.
The government has money to give, but we need to provide a comprehensive list of those affected so that we can put forward our case for that funding. The time scale for all of this is very tight, so our teams are working hard to get the information together. So far we have visited and identified over 1000 properties.
Although the events in July have slipped out of the news, for many people returning back to normality will be a long and distressing road that could take up to a year.
Here are a group of people doing a fantastic job.
South West tourism, working with the Cotswold and Forest of Dean destination management organisation have announced a £50,000 marketing package to reassure visitors that Gloucestershire is open for business after the floods. Find out what the Cotswold area has to offer as a tourist destination from the official Cotswolds tourism website.
The South West of England regional development agency is making available up to £2m as an emergency fund to help support those businesses hit most severely by the floods.
The scheme aims to assist in rapid business recovery by providing assistance for business advice and physical losses as a direct consequence of the recent floods in the South West, principally Gloucestershire.
By now everyone should have received a letter about monthly and annual memberships for leisure@cheltenham and how these have been affected by the closure of our flood damaged leisure facilities. Just in case you didn’t get a copy, we provide the letters below. A big thank you to everyone for their kind words of support.
With lots of enquiries coming in about our flood damaged leisure facilities we’re trying to pull together information and give a formal announcement about where we are right now.
At the moment we’re trying to get the running track and a few facilities that support it open, perhaps in a couple of weeks time. The rest of the centre was very badly damaged and will take a long time to recover. The video below shows the moment the machine room flooded. This is the room that houses all the pumps and filters that support the swimming pool, it finished up under twenty five feet of water.
The video below shows the same machine room being pumped out a few days later.
The South West of England regional development agency is making available up to £2m as an emergency fund to help support those businesses hit most severely by the floods.
A special webpage has been set up to provide information and guidance.
BBC Points West visited leisure@cheltenham today to see the damage caused by the floods. leisure@cheltenham manager, Stephen Petherick gave the film crew a tour and did an interview about the effects of the flooding.
The South West of England regional development agency is making available up to £2m as an emergency fund to help support those businesses hit most severely by the floods.
A special webpage has been set up to provide information and guidance.
The images and video below show Stephen Petherick the commercial manager of leisure@cheltenham touring the darkened corridors of the flood damaged leisure centre. The insurance inspectors who visited a couple of days ago described it as one of the worst hit facilities in the region. Everything is now coated in a fine layer of silt, and on the walls a tide mark that shows the extent of the water. Sprung wooden floors are bowed and distorted and equipment lies scattered where it settled when the flood waters receded.
Everyone would like to thank the wonderful community around the centre, the residents of Hudson Street, Manser Street and Tommy Taylors Lane who provided food and drinks during the night of the flood and the period afterwards. Their support has been brilliant.
Twelve Portaloos have been installed at the entrances to Regent Arcade in the High Street and Regent Street.
We’ve just heard that loss adjustors called in by the council to assess the damage from last week’s flooding have spoken of ‘catastrophic damage’ at leisure@cheltenham.
At a meeting with council officers yesterday, loss adjustors said that, of all the public services and sites they had visited across the region, leisure@cheltenham has suffered the worst damage they had seen.
Continue reading ‘Catastrophic damage at leisure@cheltenham’
The South West of England Regional Development Agency is making up to £2m available as an emergency fund (download the PDF) to help support small and medium sized businesses hit most severely by the current flooding chaos.
There have been concerns expressed about food safety in businesses that are open despite having no water supply. Please be assured that inspections are being carried out daily and nightly by the council’s food safety team. Most businesses are complying with hygiene standards voluntarily but if you do have a complaint or worry then call us on 01242 262626 and they will be looked into.
Alternatively, if you are a business looking for information then please read about the crisis team set up for businesses hit by the flooding.
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BBC Gloucestershire news
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