SEAN O'NEIL: Who is new Perth leisure centre actually for?
I have a question for Perth and Kinross Council.
Who is the new proposed leisure centre at Thimblerow actually for?
The swimmers don't want it. The curlers don't want it. The indoor sports community doesn't want it.
Our Olympians don't want it. And the public doesn't want it.
Nobody wants this £61 million project.
Well, nobody except a handful of councillors and some unelected officers and their boss.
This week, the Perth and Kinross Community Sports Network (PKCSN) slammed the council consultation on the future of Bell's Sports Centre as 'misleading'.
They are a campaign group representing a dozen local sports groups and backed by nine national sporting bodies.
PKCSN want Bell's reopened as an indoor sports venue and are opposed to their inclusion in the PH2O plans which leaves them with less facilities.
The council wants to turn Bell's into an unheated arena with artificial pitches.
And the campaigners are angry with the council's public consultation as it only offered up one option on the future of Bell's, the unheated one.
There was no proposal to reopen Bell's in its previous guise, before it was flooded when the council opted not to close the floodgates on the North Inch despite storm warnings.
PKCSN's concern is that people opted for a yes vote as they were afraid it was that or nothing.
It's a valid concern when you read some of the comments left on the consultation.
I think the consultation led people exactly where the council wanted them to go.
The Bell's consultation typifies one of the main issues surrounding this whole PH2O Thimblerow leisure centre fiasco.
It doesn't seem like any other options are getting a fair crack at the whip.
Questions are being written to suit the answer, not the other way around.
In the Bell's consultation, for example, the council had already written a report that the public should only be asked about an unheated future for the facility.
Is that really a consultation?
When you've already decided the outcome you want the most.
It's a slight improvement on having no consultations at all I suppose, which had been the council's and Live Active Leisure's (LAL) modus operandi up until that stage.
Then there's car parking.
The council's desire is to build their unwanted new leisure centre, with no dedicated leisure pool, on the most popular car park in Perth.
This will obviously reduce the number of car parking spaces in the city centre.
But hold on a second it won't, because the council are buying Kinnoull Street car park and that totally negates the loss of Thimblerow.
The people of Perth will now have the ability to park in a car park they always had the ability to park in.
And that's totally how maths works.
But wait, there's more.
Unfortunately, the council's incredible Kinnoull Street coup hasn't quite offset the loss of Thimblerow spaces enough to justify the depleted numbers at peak shopping times.
But that's okay, because there's also now the 1,324 spaces at St Catherine's Retail Park.
This is incredible for two reasons and again shows how information is presented to suit the answer and not the question.
The council do not own the car park at St Catherine's Retail Park.
So on one hand, the loss of Thimblerow doesn't matter because the council are replacing it with a car park that already exists but they didn't own (Kinnoull Street).
But on the other hand, the loss of Thimblerow doesn't matter because people can just park at this car park that already exists and the council still doesn't own.
That's not even the most baffling element of St Catherine's Retail Park car park being included in the figures.
This is an out-of-town retail park.
The council's whole argument for building this leisure centre that nobody wants at Thimblerow is because it will, somehow, attract more footfall to the city centre.
And yet, the way they are counteracting the loss of the most popular car park in the city centre is by telling shoppers they can park at the out-of-town retail park.
Anyone even mildly aware of high street discourse over the last decade will know out-of-town retail parks are considered one of the main reasons behind high street decline, with the availability of free car parking a key factor.
I would say make it make sense, but I suspect they don't want it to.
So I'll ask it again.
Who is this new Perth leisure centre at Thimblerow actually for?
Because it's not the shoppers either.
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