Great Yarmouth's new leisure complex plan revealed

Plans for a new multi-million pound health and leisure complex for a seaside town have been revealed.

The Marina Centre on Great Yarmouth's seafront is to be demolished and a new £26m facility built.

It will include a 25-metre six-lane pool with full disabled access, water flumes, a climbing wall and a cafe.

A Great Yarmouth Borough Council spokesman said: "The famous Golden Mile is set for a once-in-a-generation investment to benefit the seafront."

He added it would benefit the "whole borough for up to 40 years, acting as a catalyst for further investment and an important community hub for the promotion of both indoor and outdoor physical activity".

The Marina Centre was built in 1981 and it is currently managed by Sentinel Leisure on behalf of the council.

The council said it needed refurbishment as doing nothing would "represent a managed decline of the facility".

It said a complete rebuild "is better value for money and a longer-term solution than refurbishing the existing one".

The mainly glass construction would be built with local authority funds "as well as external funding sources".

Building is planned to start in winter 2019-20, with the complex opening for summer 2021.

Campaigners have started an online petition to prevent the closure of the Marina Centre unless the replacement was built somewhere else first, so that facilities were not lost to people in the town as they would be if it was rebuilt on the same site.

A council spokesman said while the site was closed for two years "swim, gym and fitness suite users will have access to the other four leisure sites operated by Sentinel Leisure Trust" in Bradwell, Bungay and Lowestoft.

Views on the designs are being sought until Tuesday, 19 March while a full public consultation is expected to be held in June.