I believe that Kingston Council never intended to rebuild the leisure centre they promised us on the site of the former Kingfisher Leisure Centre in Kingston Town. 

The evidence that the thing that the council really wanted was an empty site is convincing.

In the summer of 2021, Kingston Council quietly submitted a planning application for the demolition of The Kingfisher Leisure Centre without any plans for a replacement leisure centre on that site or indeed anywhere else. The council approved their own planning application on 1 September 2021, the first day possible after the summer holidays, in an attempt to avoid scrutiny of their actions. 

The council's objective?

In my opinion, the council wanted all along a cleared and empty site that will facilitate the mass over-development of Kingston Town being planned in the council's new Local Plan and "vision" for Kingston Town Centre - currently open to consultation until 30 April 2023  - a vision that will be policy and which - if approved without objection - will expand Kingston town centre to three times its current area right up to Richmond Park and across the whole of Norbiton, covering long-established neighbourhoods that can then be bulldozed and replaced with high-rise dense development as has happened already in much of Croydon, under "opportunity area" over-development policies.

But we caught on to the council's intentions and sought legal advice. Having been served with a legal letter from Leigh Day, which laid out strong grounds for a legal challenge of any demolition of The Kingfisher Leisure Centre without a replacement pool, Kingston Council was forced to form another plan that would allow them to demolish The Kingfisher.

The Council spent a lot of time - and probably a lot of our money on legal advice - hatching a plan that "sort of" promised a new leisure centre but did not promise anything concrete in reality, and they spent huge amounts of money on a propaganda campaign to Kingston residents for a planning application - which they approved - for a shiny new leisure centre which was not properly costed and for which they had no funding in place.

However, the council's actions were enough to prevent any further legal challenge and they hastily demolished The Kingfisher Leisure Centre. 

So now Kingston Council is where they initially wanted to be - they have a massive cleared site - The Cattle Market and The Kingfisher sites combined are huge - and are no doubt negotiating with developers for residential and commercial development across much of the site.

My belief is that Kingston Council will now argue that it is too expensive to build a leisure centre of the size and scope of the one promised in the council's propaganda campaign, and that the council never intended to build that leisure centre in the first place, and maybe even never intended to build a new leisure centre on The Kingfisher site.

My offer of a bet to Kingston Council would be that we will either never see a new leisure centre on the old Kingfisher Leisure Centre site which will be given over to developers for residential and commercial development or, if we do, it will be squashed on the previous Kingfisher Leisure Centre site, sandwiched between massive high rise towers with much of the open green space around the old leisure centre developed.

What do you think? Shall I offer the bet to Kingston Council?

Please read my open letter to Kingston's Councillors after I attended Full Council last week, an experience that I found hugely distressing.

The demolition of The Kingfisher Leisure Centre is part of a much bigger plan to knock down and rebuild vast swathes of Kingston Town and clear space for their hugely destructive and undemocratically agreed "Opportunity Area" in Kingston.

If we focus on the bigger picture, we can see just how wrong it was for The Kingfisher Leisure Centre to be demolished, leaving tens of thousands of residents with nowhere to swim for years