Kingston residents have told councillors they do not trust them to deliver a new leisure centre in the borough and demanded to know how and when it will be built.

Kingston Council said "swift progress" is being made on revised plans to replace the Kingfisher Leisure Centre, after realising it did not have enough cash in its current budget to build the complex it had previously approved. The current leisure centre was closed last year.

But residents raised doubts over the project at a council meeting on April 18 and said they have no idea how long they are gong to have to wait for a new centre to open. Jon Tolley asked what lessons had been learned so "any future plans are not only believable but achievable because this, by any stretch, has gone wrong – it was predicted and it happened". 

Mr Tolley said: "We need to be honest about how we've ended up in the situation we're in at the moment. And the reason why the past matters is because we need to know that we can trust what is about to happen in the future and that's not just about the pool." 

He added: "It's about all the other plans that council has – so that's about plans for social housing, for the environment, for protecting our vulnerable [residents]. Because right now I don't trust my councillors on this project and I need to know that I can trust my councillors on all the things that this council needs to deliver."

The council is revising plans for the leisure centre after being told through a tendering process it would cost £79.5million to build the new facility granted planning permission in May 2022 – much higher than the £43.8m it had put aside for it. The Kingfisher shut in 2019 after it was decided repairs to fix the roof would cost more than £5m.

The current site of the former Kingfisher Leisure Centre (Credit: Nub News)

Ahead of the meeting, the council said it is on track to provide detailed updates on the revised project in June. An outline business case is set to be presented to the place committee on June 20, with proposed timescales and options for the revised mix of facilities at the new complex on the Kingfisher site.

But local Mediha Boran slammed the statement as "very PR" with "no substance" at the meeting. She said residents "are not clear how long we are going to wait for a new leisure centre on the existing site" and "it's about trust and confidence in people who are handling this".

She asked why "this business case won't fail in the same way as the previous debacle… we need an answer to that before we get to that 20 June meeting". A petition started by Ms Boran demanding a full statement on the delay has been signed by more than 1,330 people.

The residents were speaking on a motion tabled by Independent councillor James Giles, calling for the council to issue a full statement within 10 working days of the meeting with answers to questions including the expected timeline for the new complex. 

Councillor Giles said: "Just today, we've seen a press release from the council's corporate press office praising 'swift progress being made on revised programme for community leisure facility'. There's nothing swift about this process.

"We've wasted £3.6million of taxpayers' money on the vanity project that was to be the 'best leisure centre in London'. We've handed significant sums, in addition, to the leisure contractor in payments to apologise for the lost income through the Kingfisher closure and these are just what has been accounted for so far."

Councillor Giles later withdrew the motion after the Lib Dems put forward their own amendment which, he said, deleted "every single word" of the original.

CGI of the originally proposed new leisure centre (Credit: Supplied by Kingston Council)

Lib Dem council leader Andreas Kirsch said the authority understands residents' frustration and disappointment about the delay which, he added, is due to factors outside of the council's control – with the construction industry and wider economy facing "unprecedented pressures". But he said the authority had made "swift progress since March" in revising the scheme. 

Councillor Kirsch said he had listened to what "residents kindly put forward to us earlier tonight and, again, fully understand the frustration". He asked residents to bear with the council until June 20.

He said: "It takes some time to look at the project again to make that progress which we are at the moment making – to come [forward] with some options… to you. We can't just out of the blue come up with new timelines which then we will miss anyway. We need to do some work first and have some ideas before we can go out with more indicative timelines and this will happen on 20 June this year." 

He said: "We are 100per cent committed to delivering an accessible and sustainable swimming and leisure centre on the existing site in Kingston and [the] announcement today proves that."