You would think The Kingfisher Leisure Centre saga would be over by now.

But no.

Kingston residents are still without a pool over 5 years since The Kingfisher was closed because of a faulty roof. And - after having submitted and approved two different plans for a new centre - Kingston Council has still not signed a contract for a new centre to be built.

But maybe, as many residents have always feared, the plan was always just to demolish The Kingfisher Leisure Centre? After all, this is what the council tried to sneak through until a legal letter from Leigh Day - funded by residents- and objections from Sport England stopped them in their tracks.

The evidence points to the possibility that Kingston Council should have stopped plans for the Kingfisher demolition in July 2022 when it appears that they had information that showed the cost of replacing it was higher than the money that the Council had approved and set aside. This would make any assertion that the demolition on grounds that a new leisure centre would be built no longer tenable.

Let's look at what seems to have happened:

Kingston Council said it would cost £40 million to build a replacement for The Kingfisher Leisure Centre. The Council approved this cost and set this figure aside in the council budget in 2022 in order to justify the hasty demolition of The Kingfisher.

However, I have unearthed information which appears to show that Kingston Council was aware in July 2022 that the costs of building a new leisure centre had already soared by 33% to £53 million.

But it appears that officers did not take the information back to any committee of the Council for approval, despite the fact that the Council had only agreed a budget of £40 million for a new leisure centre, and the demolition of The Kingfisher went ahead in August and September 2022, with officers appearing to know that there was not enough money in the pot to replace it and that the Council had not approved a £53 million cost for a new centre.

The 33% increase in the cost of building a new leisure centre from £40 million to £53 million appears not to have been disclosed to any committee of the Council until October 2022 when the Kingfisher Leisure Centre had already been razed to the ground and so could no longer be saved.

Council officers thus appear to have acted outside their statutory powers by not asking them to reconsider their decision to build a new leisure centre back to elected representatives - who had only agreed a budget of £40 million for a new centre when the costs were now £53 million – before allowing The Kingfisher Leisure Centre to be demolished.

Armed with clear and up-to-date information on already soaring costs of building a new centre, Councillors may well have decided to repair the roof of The Kingfisher Leisure Centre at a cost of £5.3 million

In addition, in the light of a 33% increase in costs of building a new leisure centre, why did council officers not stand back and ask themselves whether costs of building the fancy new leisure centre - plans for which they had spent millions of pounds developing - might rise further – which of course they did, eventually to over £80 million.

This situation appears to indicate severe failures of governance and decision-making at Kingston Council.

Worse, they indicate a huge loss in value for money by council spending of our council tax.

Kingston Council spent millions of pounds closing the Kingfisher Leisure Centre from November 2019 until its demolition in 2022, securing the empty site, and on consultants to cook up plans for a glorious new centre, complete with a rooftop football pitch and a climbing wall, plans which it later abandoned. And the council is now planning on spending at least £40 million on a scaled-down leisure centre, remarkably similar to The Kingfisher Leisure Centre that it demolished but architecturally inferior, that it is claimed is also already running over budget.

The loss and lack of public leisure facilities that residents have suffered as a result of the closure and demolition of The Kingfisher Leisure Centre has had and is still having a significant impact on local residents. It also has disproportionately affected people with protected characteristics under The Equalities Act 2010, with the effects of such lengthy delays – especially in relation to reprovision of leisure facilities that are equal in quality and quantity to those provided by the Kingfisher as required by policy – appearing not to have been considered by Kingston Council.