£20m 'not at risk' says city council

NORTH East council has been given two more years to spend almost £20m of Government money on a new leisure centre hit by a series of delays.

- DANIEL HOLLAND

Newcastle City Council was awarded £19.8m from the Levelling Up Fund (LUF), a flagship programme under the Conservatives, in 2021 to build a new sports and leisure destination in West Denton.

It had been hoped that the state-of-the-art facility would be completed in 2024, but construction is still yet to begin and there have been long-standing worries about the escalating costs of the project with the price tag jumping from an original £22.3m to a predicted £34.2m.