Photo Portrait Robin Cousins
OLYMPIC gold-medallist Robin Cousins has thrown his backing behind a campaign to resurrect a neglected Bristol sport centre named after him.
The famous figure skater, who won a gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, has given his support to the campaign calling for the Robin Cousins Centre, in Avonmouth, to re-open.
Mr Cousins, who is also a three-times World Free Skating champion and European gold medallist, spoke of his desire for the centre to be restored to give “the local community somewhere proud to call their own”.
He said:
“I am very happy to hear that there is a campaign to re-open the sports centre that bears my name. I know it has stood empty for 2 years or so and feel at a time when sport and exercise is very much in the headlines the timing couldn¹t be better.
“If the work can be done and the efforts of the campaign rewarded I would like to think the centre will give the local community somewhere they can be proud to call their own and it may find itself once again being used by families and sports enthusiasts, as it was when I opened it 25 yrs ago.”
His comments came as local campaigner Charlotte Leslie launched an online petition calling on the city council to re-open the maligned centre.
Charlotte, who is also the Prospective Conservative MP for Bristol North West, has delivered more than 5,000 surveys and copies of the petition in the local community, to gauge support for the vital amenity.
The sports centre, and adjoining swimming pool, was closed in January 2006 by the then Lib-Dem-led Bristol City Council, which cited the £300,000 a year that was required to keep them open as the main reason behind the decision.
It has lain derelict for more than two years, after a successful bid by ex-local policeman Ian Moore MBE to reopen the centre was delayed by an ongoing wrangle between the now Labour-led city council and the Highways Agency, over access to the site.
Obstacle to progress
The Highways Agency has demanded £10,000 for access to the centre, as well as financial benefit from any future sale of the site for housing if the access road was transferred to the Robin Cousins centre. In its turn, the Council has refused a suggestion to simply rent the access road so that the Highways Agency would retain ownership, but that the Robin Cousins centre would have use of it. So there has been apparently little progress.
Charlotte said:
“It is outrageous that an unelected Government QUANGO can prevent the reopening of our community facilities, and I am pressing the council to show what they are proactively doing to get urgent progress.”
“I will be asking questions over the Highways Agency’s right to make such extortionate demands of communities, and taking this to the highest level if necessary.
“Responses to my survey are flooding in and I will be compiling a full report, together with petition signatures which I will present to the council, The Highways Agency, and further up the chain if we still get no movement.”
“People in Shirehampton and Avonmouth have had enough of the discussions and talking. We want to see some action.”
