Leisure centre profits could help budding sports stars

Ards Blair Mayne Leisure Centre

 

By Lesley Walsh

PROFITS from the lucrative Ards Blair Mayne leisure complex could be channelled into supporting future Olympians, following the recent international sporting successes displayed by local athletes in Paris.

News that the profits from the centre will help supplement Ards and North Down Council’s Sports Forum Grants for 2024/25, was revealed after it emerged that the grants budget for the whole year has been almost completely spent.

SDLP councillor Joe Boyle issued a warning about the dwindling coffers of the Sports Forum grants during the September meeting of the council’s Community and Wellbeing Committee.

“Here we are in mid-September and we have spent 84% of our budget,” he said, adding he did not wish to turn away future sporting stars.

“We are not here to say ‘no, we can’t help you’. We should be incorporating more money into the initial budget allocation,” he maintained. 

Commenting that ‘we had more Olympians’ than any other borough in Northern Ireland, he said every effort should be made to encourage children to participate in sports.

He wondered how such a record could be maintained ‘with minimal funding’. 

The council’s director of Community and Wellbeing at Ards, Graeme Bannister, said the local authority had predicted an increased demand for sport-related funding following local success at the Olympics.

Mr Bannister said an appeal for an extra £20,000 for the Sports Grants Fund had been turned down during the last rates setting process.

Currently the 2024/25 budget stands at £45,000, with grants doled out to clubs for a range of costs including accommodation, coaching, events and travel among other categories. 

Seeking ways to boost local sporting funding he said the department looked at the success of Ards Blair Mayne in generating income. 

He said various options to ‘utilise the income from Ards Blair Mayne’ to support the sports budget will be contained within a council report to come before the committee in October.

Green Party councillor Lauren Kendall supported the idea, adding praise for those managing the centre.

“Not only do we have successful sports stars but we have to show support for how successful our leisure services people are,” she said. 

She said the borough was ‘churning out wonderful sports stars’ and that local sporting provision should be equipped to support ‘our stars of the future’.

Ms Kendall further applauded their ‘forethought and forward-thinking’ that they had applied for extra funding when budgets were allocated at the rates setting process near the start of this year.