Consultants suggest big move for Littlehampton centre

The leisure and culture strategy drawn up by consultants Colliers International, says that relocating the sports facility to a central location could be part of an ambitious overall plan to continue the revival of Littlehampton.

The St Martin’s car park should be the focus, possibly including a cinema, 10-pin bowling, branded restaurants such as Nandos, and High Street “name” shops, as well as the swimming/sports centre replacement.

An overview select committee of Arun councillors was due to take a first look at the report on Wednesday, before the council’s cabinet considers it next month.

The report looks at leisure right across Arun district, including culture, entertainment and tourism aspects, as well as sports facilities.

Recent improvements in Littlehampton, including the opening of Waitrose in the town centre, the East Bank regeneration scheme, huge publicity gained by the East Beach Café and features such as the Longest Bench are highlighted as strengths of the town.

But on the downside, the town centre is described as “weak” in terms of the quality and range of retail and leisure and, the report adds: “There is still much work to be done in improving both the quality of what people experience in Littlehampton, and its image.”

Both Littlehampton and Bognor Regis need more hotel accommodation, the current shortage making it difficult for the resorts to generate more income from tourism.

Arundel, although hailed as “one of the most attractive heritage towns in the country”, suffers from poor “quality of the streetscape... far below the standard that should be expected of a world-standard heritage town”, and again restricting the town’s potential for leisure and economic development.

On the subject of the swimming centre move in Littlehampton, the strategy suggests that selling off the current site for housing development would bring in the £7million needed to relocate the facility either to St Martin’s car park or to The Littlehampton Academy, where it could be shared with students.

However, John Stride, chief executive of Inspire Leisure, the trust now running Arun’s leisure facilities including the swimming and sports centre, said Inspire would prefer the centre to stay where it was.

“We believe it might actually cost more to run a pool in the centre of town.

“Parking could be an issue, with a potential conflict if there was high demand for parking from shoppers at the same time as high demand from our customers.

“If facilities went to the Academy, there would be no access for people to use, say, badminton courts and play short mat bowls in the day time, which is when a large swathe of our population spend their leisure time as they are no longer working.

“We welcome the fact that the strategy says there is a need for investment in leisure facilities, and we would certainly want to see more investment at the swimming and sports centre, to provide an eight-lane pool and a permanent sports hall.”

Arun council leader Gill Brown described the strategy as “a huge opportunity” to boost employment opportunities in the district and enhance the economy.

“There are some very exciting things in the strategy,” she added.