‘Disappointing’

More fundamentally, it undermines the success which the Inspire Leisure trust has made of leisure policy, which was set up by Arun with the aim of continuing the very broad leisure facilities that Arun provided at that time, (2006/07) at a cost of £1,4m per year before Inspire took over.

It was a brave move and paid dividends. Has another independent analysis of the current cost of the services been undertaken, as happened in 2009, when Inspire came out very positively?

Inspire received £1,040,000 at the start, with a £50,000 reduction for each following year. Given inflation increases, it is now costing virtually half of Arun’s own £1.4m figure – £800,000 in the last financial year. With the very large rise in fuel cost which both swimming pools rely on so heavily, this is a solid achievement by competent, unpaid trustees and hard-working staff.

Whatever the future of the community assets in Littlehampton, the cost to the council of running the swimming pool at Felpham will continue and no doubt increase, since it cannot be sold off.

Football pitches, tennis courts, putting greens and very much more will have to be maintained – just look at Inspire’s website to see the facilities managed by the trust for the whole of the Arun district.

Attempts to reduce staff costs will mean staff taken back into the council workforce or redundancy packages.

The trust also has the opportunity to provide £4m for investment, which would bring revenue costs down.

The only stumbling block to this is the side-stepping by Arun on the original intended grant of 25 year leases on the properties. Without these, the investment cannot be obtained.

I emphasis that the cost of the two Littlehampton community sites take a very much smaller proportion of the grant than all the other calls upon it from other venues.

With investment at the Windmill in digital equipment, access to programmes relayed digitally from theatres and concert halls around the world would become available to the people in the Arun district.

Attend one of those types of productions at the very comfortable Windmill to see how much support there is in the Arun district for them.

Given the success of Inspire Leisure so far, it shows how much that brave decision has paid off and in the years to come, as it continues to look after the very varied and essential assets so well, the community can look forward to keeping all of these at an increasingly lower cost.

Jackie Mallinson

South Terrace

Littlehampton