| Plymouth Life Centre |
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| Plymouth Life Centre, also known as the Sharron Davies Life Centre after the Olympic swimming medallist who hails from Plymouth, is one of the UK’s best places to go for anyone who enjoys any sort of sporting activity. The Life Centre opened in March 2012 and has already received commitments from the national Canadian diving team and the Lithuanian swimming team for training in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics. The project has cost around £46.5 million, the most ever invested in leisure activities in Plymouth. |
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The centre boasts the following facilities:
· Olympic standard 50-metre pool with 10 lanes and a moveable floor for added flexibility
· Specialised diving pool, again with moveable floor so it can be used as a standard pool
· Dryside training facility with specialist equipment for competitive divers and other sportspeople
· Family pool with gently sloping ‘beach’ entry, a bubble pool, and flumes
· Climbing/abseiling area including a 15-metre wall and aerial assault course
· Indoor bowls centre with 8 lanes
· Multi-use sports hall with 12 courts suitable for badminton, basketball, netball, 5-a-side football....
· Fitness suites containing 150 stations
· Sauna and steam rooms
· Youth gym
· Public cafe available to all visitors
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Aquatic sports are a major feature of the Plymouth Life Centre. The main 50-metre competition pool is the only one of its size in the south west. Along with two other swimming pools in the area – the pool located in the University College Marjon and the pool proposed for Plymstock – the Life Centre pool puts Plymouth at the heart of competitive swimming and diving as well as providing a superb outlet for sporting activity for local residents.
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| Plymouth City Council has a 10-year contract with Everyone Active to manage the centre, the idea being to encourage the citizens of Plymouth to have a more active life and also to attract investment to the city. Everyone Active specialises in managing sports and leisure centres for local authorities and currently manages 18 of them. |
| The company has 20 years’ experience in the field and advertises itself as “the UK’s No 1 activity brand” and it aims to get everyone to take 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 times a week. While it heavily promotes the leisure centres it manages, Everyone Active also strongly encourages any sort of activity in any environment – in the open air, at home, or at work. |
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| The Plymouth team is led by David Greenwood, who has explained that, while the £39-a-month membership is the best option for anyone using the facilities more than twice a week, the LIfe Centre is also available to those who choose to drop in on a more casual basis and pay on the day. Individual sessions for swimming are £3.80 for adults and £2.70 for children under 16 and there are lots of other activities to choose from too. Concessions are available for pensioners, students, those on income support, and others. |
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It was originally anticipated that the Plymouth Life Centre would be open for use in October 2011 but delays have been forgotten now that the site is open. |
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Around 700 local school children joined the opening weekend on March 24th and 25th, and there were demonstrations of many activities, including swimming, diving, table tennis and climbing, by local sports clubs.
Plymouth City Council has gone out of its way to ensure that Plymouth Life Centre will be accessible to all. It has worked closely with local and national disability experts and specialist organisations to make the centre as inclusive as possible. Facilities include disabled parking bays, level access to all activity areas, fully accessible toilets and changing facilities, disabled buggies for those who wish to play bowls, a fitness suite accredited by ‘Inclusive Fitness’, and specialist facilities to allow the disabled to use the climbing zone.
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| With Balfour Beatty, Plymouth City Council has also made considerable efforts to implement environmentally friendly features during the design and construction of Plymouth Life Centre. As a result, 20% of the power used within the centre is provided by sustainable technologies, for example reusing heat from air-conditioning, automatically turning off lights, and using rainwater for flushing toilets. The centre is hoping to impress the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) with its green credentials and achieve a “very good” rating. |
| Balfour Beatty also committed to helping the local economy by employing apprentices from the area and using local suppliers for goods and materials. Where it uses sub-contractors, Balfour Beatty encourages them to follow its lead. 16 new apprenticeships have been created since February 2010 when construction started at the site, many of which were facilitated by Balfour Beatty’s Community Liaison Officer (CLO). Among the many visitors seeking jobs, there have been 25 groups from Plymouth University and University College Marjon, and 7 groups from City College Plymouth, as well as 34 groups from schools in the Plymouth area. Balfour Beatty has taken on 4 work experience students each week, giving them an opportunity to experience the construction industry at first hand. |
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| The emerging Plymouth Life Centre has played host to a large number of sports team coaches and players over recent months. |
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The Plymouth and District Netball League, with around 900 senior and junior team members playing in over 60 teams, has made the Plymouth Life Centre its home ground. The superior facilities provided are extremely attractive, not just for the players but also for spectators who enjoy a roomy seating area in the new Life Centre. In particular, the new venue provides a run-off space which meets the latest national netball court standards, one of the first in the country. England Netball has been so impressed that it is financing the Plymouth Life Centre to the tune of £200,000.
Similarly, the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) is also investing in the Life Centre over 3 years and is separately contributing £40,000 to be used for water polo. The ASA’s Talent Development Officer sees the venue as a massive boost for local sportsmen and women. Plymouth has produced some top athletes in the world of swimming and diving, such as Sharron Davies, Tom Daley and Antony James, and the Life Centre will allow their successors to stay closer to home as they achieve national status in their fields.
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The English Table Tennis Association (ETTA) hopes that the Plymouth Life Centre will help to catapult table tennis into the big time and encourage locals to join up. It has already signed a contract with Plymouth City Council to use the venue for table tennis coaching and intends to hold competitions there too. The ETTA anticipates that some of the major table tennis events will be drawn to the Life Centre. |
| Hailed as a world-class facility, Plymouth Life Centre has certainly put the city of Plymouth on the map as far as sporting venues are concerned. |
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