Kingston Council rushed to demolish The Kingfisher Leisure Centre in Kingston Town Centre as soon as it was legally able to do so.

There now remains nothing but am empty site where our swimming pool once stood.

In the meantime, the council stated in September 2022 that the estimate for a replacement facility had jumped from the original £40 million to £54 million, even before the design brief was put out to tender.

The deadline for submissions is the end of January 2023.

The news is not good. 

It has just been announced that the costs of a planned new leisure centre in Woolwich - which looks remarkably similar to the one "planned" in Kingston - have soared.

But even worse, Kingston Council is itself proposing the above policies for the provision of "community" facilities in its draft new Local Plan that is currently open to consultation that will leave many families who are unable to pay high prices for vital services such as swimming lessons with access to none.

You can see that proposed policy C2 even allows for the loss of existing community facilities as part of a "wider public service transformation programme". 

This "transformation programme" is exactly what Kingston Council is planning for Kingston Town Centre.

We may never see a new community facility that is accessible to everyone and affordable to everyone on the old Kingfisher site.

This is looking like the outcome we feared.

We were right to fight tooth and nail to try and save The Kingfisher Leisure Centre from demolition.

But what do you do in the face of public authorities who are intent on bulldozing your town and your communities no matter the cost to the people whose interests they are meant to represent?