Government ambitions to get two million more adults to take regular exercise could be thwarted as the recession undermines plans to build new facilities according to new research from a leading London-based property consultant.
The government had high hopes that we Britons would be swept to new levels of physical fitness, either shamed into action or sucked along in the slipstream as the UK's Olympic contenders prepared for 2012.
It was to be rather like the Wimbledon-effect, only better: everybody and their aunt dusts off a tennis racket for two weeks every summer, but this was supposed to last for years.
A host of new sports facilities were to provide the cornerstone of the fitness regime for the new cohort of healthy sub-Olympians. And with London as host city that was where, quite apart from the official Olympic facilities, the densest rash of new sports halls and swimming pools was expected to materialise.
The great national fitness plan may be going awry however. After an initial enthusiastic flurry there has been a rather "disappointing absence" of an Olympic effect in the provision of new sports facilities in London according to new research from property consultant Drivers Jonas.
The firm says the number of new and refurbished sports centres completed in the capital has slowed over the last two years.
The survey of all 33 London boroughs revealed that 61 new or refurbished facilities were completed in the two years to the end of 2008. It took only 18 months to achieve that total in the period covered by the previous Drivers Jonas survey.
The number of projects in the pipeline has also shrunk from 36 to 21. New schemes coming through hit a low around the end of 2008 and it is hard to see a reversal of the trend in the lead up to 2012 according the report states.
The recession has taken its toll, according to the firm. Some projects are funded through "planning gain" whereby, under the so-called Section 106 agreement, in order to get planning consent a developer promises to provide public facilities as part of a bigger scheme. As it is a by-product, a sports facility can become a casualty if the commercial element of the project is shelved.
However, 43 per cent of the total completed were publicly funded. Of these facilities, 30 per cent are gyms, 16 per cent are sports halls, 14 per cent are swimming pools and 4 per cent are synthetic pitches while running tracks and squash courts each represent 2 per cent. The largest proportion of the facilities is dance halls – 32 per cent – so perhaps a Celebrity-Come-Dancing-effect is in play too?
The new facilities are not evenly spread, nor are they all on the eastern side of the capital where the Olympics will have their centre of gravity. Hounslow, Lewisham and Ealing have provided the most new facilities although Hackney, in the east, has seen the biggest public sector provision.
Boroughs in which no new facilities have opened in the last two years include Brent, Kensington & Chelsea, Merton, Newham and Redbridge. However, Drivers Jonas points out that raising the level of participation in sport is more than a matter of building new facilities.
The firm's survey points out that Sutton, Kingston and Enfield are ranked highly in terms of residents' satisfaction with their facilities but these boroughs rank rather less well in terms of actual participation.
"Build it and they will come"? Well maybe.
