We are delighted this week to be able to publish the news that the future of the Sports Centre building has finally been secured.

The Sports Centre, as many of you know, sits within the Churchill Academy & Sixth Form site. When Churchill first became an Academy in 2011, all the land within the site boundary transferred over to the Academy trust – except for the Sports Centre, which remained in the ownership of North Somerset Council and operated as a leisure centre for the local community.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the leisure centre closed – and it has not reopened. For the past three years it has remained closed, whilst extensive discussions have taken place between the Academy, the council and the local community about its future. We have all been desperate to find a way to preserve the centre as an asset for the local community, and for the Academy. Since we joined the Lighthouse Schools Partnership on 1st April, the multi-academy trust has also been able to lend its expertise and resources to the discussions.

We are now able to confirm that the Council has agreed to transfer the sports centre building to the Lighthouse Schools Partnership (subject to approval by the executive member), along with a contribution of just over £600,000 towards repairs and building maintenance works that are essential to bring the building back into a fully usable condition. The full cost of these works is over a million pounds; the remainder of the money will come from the Lighthouse Schools Partnership, of which we are now a part.

In January, the council announced that the swimming pool would not reopen, and it has now been drained. This space will be turned into a multi-purpose hall, which we hope to be able to use flexibly for teaching, assemblies, and exams. This will mean that we will no longer have to shut the Academy’s own Sports Hall – and associated changing rooms – during exam seasons, reducing disruption to the PE curriculum and ensuring that we will have changing rooms available for students all year round!

The centre will also provide us with studio space for performing arts, and will become the new base for the PE department. We hope to use the additional space to free up existing Academy resources for much-needed student welfare facilities as well.

Community use has been at the heart of all our discussions over the past three years. An active and engaged group of local residents has been instrumental in campaigning and lobbying for the centre to remain a community resource, and we have been supportive of this ambition. Our Academy sits at the heart of our community, and we are keen to continue to play our part. Once the building is operational again, the facilities will be available to community groups just as our 3G pitch and sports hall have been throughout.

We are grateful to everyone involved in getting us to this point. Council officers have worked with us, as have the local community groups. Mrs Franklin and Mr Bigwood have spent hours locked in talks and discussions, and latterly Louise Malik, Chief Financial and Operating Officer for the Lighthouse Schools Partnership, has devoted many hours to delivering an agreement.

We now have quite a task ahead of us in planning the extensive building works required to repair, refurbish and redecorate the centre, to bring it up to standard for use by our staff, students and the community after three years of uncertainty. We are fortunate that the Lighthouse Schools Partnership will manage this project with us, freeing up valuable time for Academy staff to focus on our students. We anticipate that the centre will re-open in the early part of 2024. We will keep you posted!