Leak after leak delay won't cost the council

Leader updates on recreation centre

- KATHRYN ANDERSON

A council chief has revealed a number of leaks - then more - were found in the new £36 million Blairgowrie Recreation Centre swimming pool's movable floor delaying its opening.

Elected members have been assured Perth and Kinross Council will not be financially impacted by the further delays to the long-awaited opening of the facility.

PKC’s strategic lead for property services, Stephen Crawford, provided an update on the latest delays to the scrutiny and performance committee on Wednesday, April 23.

The new facility will be Scotland's first leisure centre built to environmentally-friendly Passivhaus standards, with state-of-the-art, low-energy facilities for the use of both Blairgowrie High School and the wider community.

Council leader Grant Laing has asked the convener of PKC’s scrutiny and performance committee, Cllr Colin Stewart, to undertake a review of the issues that have led to the delays.

Updating councillors at Wednesday's meeting, Mr Crawford said: “The original handover of Blairgowrie Recreation Centre was at the end of December. One of the last key operations in the construction is the filling of the swimming pool.

“At that time, we identified a number of small leaks and obviously that did not meet our completion criteria.

“Since then, we have found a number of other leaks and we've been working through that over the last three months to deal with those.”

The strategic lead was “cautiously optimistic” the situation had been resolved and added: “We're currently refilling the pool at this time.

“With LAL [Live Active Leisure] and the school [Blairgowrie High School], we have a transition plan ready to put in place when we receive practical completion.