Plans for an additional 31 parking spaces at Wyre Forest Leisure Centre will be discussed by the Council’s Cabinet next week (Tuesday 14 March).

The car park would be reconfigured and extended to enable extra spaces to be created. The centre has proved to be exceptionally popular.  On average 35,000 users have been visiting the facility each month.  This went up to 47,000 in January, which is 4,000 more than the combined numbers for Wyre Forest Glades Leisure Centre and Stourport Sports Centre in previous years.  As a result the car park has been exceptionally busy and there were complaints from leisure centre users and neighbours.

The work to extend the car park would require planning permission and the Cabinet looks set to agree for an application to be submitted to the Council’s Planning Committee.  The plans would be submitted by Places for People who run the centre on the Council’s behalf.

Councillor Marcus Hart, Leader of Wyre Forest District Council said:

“The Cabinet meeting is the first stage in the formal process we need to go through to progress our plans to create more parking spaces at the leisure centre.  We are working as quickly as possible to make these changes and if the Cabinet agrees to the recommendations, the planning application would be considered at the next available meeting of the  Planning Committee. 

We are grateful to everyone for working with us to help resolve the parking issues but there are still busy times.  We hope these plans will help alleviate the problems.”

If the planning application is submitted and approved, then the works are expected to be completed in May.  The Cabinet is also considering a recommendation to share the cost of the works equally between the Council and Places for PeopleLeisure Ltd.  The Council’s contribution would be funded from a contingency reserve for this project and there would not be any additional impact for Council Tax payers.

 The Cabinet meeting starts at 6pm and will be webcast. It can be viewed live from our Webcast Webpage on the evening and will be available to watch from the webcast library.