At the meeting of Kingston's Full Council on 12 October 2021, I presented this petition signed by over 3,600 people AGAINST the demolition of the Kingfisher Leisure Centre and asking for a "guaranteed* and legally-binding commitment" from the council to replace the existing facilities offered by the Kingfisher
Please keep signing and sharing this petition urgently. Let's get 4000 signatures - and please donate to help fund an Opinion from Jenny Wigley QC on the legality of the council's decision to approve the planning application to demolish our Kingfisher
Councillor John Sweeney stated at that meeting (at 1 hour, 38minutes on) that he could not accept what the petition is asking the Council to do and that the Council is not in a position to offer any such guarantee:
"We have made the decisions that we have made....I believe that it is the right thing for the Borough to do....The petition is asking for things we cannot give you.... for a guarantee and a legally-binding commitment....all we can do is make the pledges and the decisions that we have made so far....and the petitioner has not quoted the meetings where we have made those decisions about guaranteeing in political terms that there will be a leisure centre on that site... The 13th May, the Response and Recovery Committee meeting, resolved to replace the leisure centre on that site"
Here is the resolution of the Response and Recovery Committee of 13 May 2021 which does not resolve to replace The Kingfisher leisure centre, but rather "delegates authority...to approve any procurement strategies...valued above £5 million". This appears to assume that such resolution happened on any earlier date, an event for which I have found no evidence
“Delegate authority to the Executive Director of Corporate and Communities, in consultation with the Leader and Portfolio Holder for Finance and Commissioning to approve any procurement strategies, in particular the replacement Kingfisher Leisure Centre, valued above £5m required to deliver the ambitions set out in this report on the recommendation of the Commissioning Governance Board”
However, in her attempt to justify the Liberal Democrats' call for immediate demolition of The Kingfisher with no firm or funded plans for replacement facilities, Councillor Stephanie Archer later at Full Council asserted (at 2 hours 7 minutes) that:
"This new leisure centre will be guaranteed on this site for 50 years"
It seems like Kingston Council want there cake and eat it
In one breath, the Council say they cannot give a guaranteed commitment to replace the existing facilities offered by The Kingfisher and, in the next, they say that their nebulous plans for replacement facilities are guaranteed for half a century
*a guarantee - "a promise that something will be done or will happen"