Kettering Conference Centre groups hope it gets saved from closure

Groups that use a leisure complex which is set to close said they hoped it could be saved.

Kettering Conference Centre, which includes the Lighthouse Theatre, Balance Health Club and Arena Sports Centre, announced it would shut at the beginning of July.

Robyn Morrison, who runs a cheerleading academy at the centre, said: "There is no way this place can be left empty."

A public meeting is set to be held later to discuss the centre's future.

An online petition started last month to save the centre has had more than 14,000 signatures.

The Compass Group, which runs the site, said all businesses at the venue had been "making a loss for a number of years".

Ms Morrison, from Corby, said the news that the centre was going to close was "absolutely awful".

The club, TCA Cheer and Tumble, has 65 members from the age of four upwards and works with primary schools in the local area.

"It's really taken off and it's such an important sport in the community," she said.

The 32-year-old said the group needed "somebody to step forward" to run the centre and was "holding on to hope" it would happen.

Ms Morrison said the group needed a building with high ceilings they could occupy outside of school hours and they had struggled to find another one.

"The options were slim because of how fantastic this facility is and how much we need this facility," she said.

Beryl Goodall runs an over-50s group at the centre, which has about 70 members.

"There is nowhere else that can do this. People come for their health and welfare and their own mental welfare," she said.

She described the news the centre would close as "devastation, especially to Kettering as a whole".

Ms Goodall, 81, said: "Here we are with this really nice building and now they're planning on closing it, it's just a tragedy for Kettering.

"You've got to have hope [it can be saved] otherwise, what's going to happen?"

The conference centre site is leased from the landowner by North Northamptonshire Council, in an arrangement inherited from the former Kettering Borough Council.

It has a contractual arrangement with a leisure company that has sublet the centre to the Compass Group.

The authority previously said it was "keen to ensure that arrangements are put in place so that services can be restored at the facility as quickly as possible".

The meeting is due to take place at 19:00 BST at Kettering Arts Centre, in St Andrew's Church.

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