Lambeth Conservatives

Labour Lambeth's introduction of charges for using tennis courts, after years of free facilities under the Conservatives, is making a LOSS. The Council has hired a security firm to patrol the park and make sure people pay up since July, but the income has only left a £179 weekly surplus, and that's before the costs of the leisure contractors and the Council are taken into account. Under the hare-brained scheme the Council also needs to cover the costs of:

sports booking contractors, Greenwich Leisure Ltd;
the time several Lambeth officers spend overseeing, directing and monitoring the contracts; and
buying new signs in every park to replace the ones that used to say 'tennis is free'

A few hundred pounds doesn't go far in the Town Hall, so it must be costing Lambeth Council more money that it's collecting to continue charging people. With winter approaching the number of bookings usually falls even further, running the risk of even bigger losses.

Cllr Clare Whelan says: "What a shame, that Lambeth children and adults are being deterred from enjoying sport in our park because of charges that don't cover the cost of the scheme, let alone contribute anything to improving the infrastructure of our local sporting facilities. If Lambeth wants to encourage sport in the borough this really isn't the way to go about it.

"I am calling on Lambeth to drop the introduction of charging for sport at these facilities immediately."

Labour's sport charges run at a loss

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