4 July 2005

About the Sports Centre

As part of the Big Lottery Fund's £330million investment in children's fitness, Harton School was awarded a grant of £1.5m towards a new sports centre for the school and local community. Using this and £200k of the school's own funds the new sports centre is being built and is due to open in September this year.

It's a large building, as the plan below shows. Built on part of the south-west playing field, just beside the swimming pool, it provides two basic facilities. There is a 600 square metre sports hall (big enough for four courts) and a 41-machine fitness suite, together with changing rooms and a proper reception area.

The sports hall will be used by the school during the day, with Bamburgh Special School and neighbouring primary schools sharing the time.

In the evenings and at weekends the sports hall will be open to the community, and here there will be coaching and development sessions run by local sporting organisations (such as the Newcastle Eagles, who will run basketball sessions), as well as aerobics, yoga and nursery football and groups like PHAB will lay on sessions for the disabled.

The fitness suite is rather different. It will be a commercial operationg and open to the community from 7.30am to 10pm during the week and 10am to 6pm at weekends.

But construction costs have increased and even with the school's £200,000 contribution, there is no money left to buy equipment for the sports hall or fitness centre. The sports hall equipment will cost up to £60k. The fitness centre equipment, £102k (which could, if necessary, be leased, although this is an expensive option).

In theory, the school could use existing funds to pay for this equipment, but with the additional running costs that the centre will impose on the school it would mean having to break into existing curriculum funding, and this is where you come in ...

... and an Appeal for Help

As well as the £200,000 towards the building costs, the school will fund the annual running costs of the centre both for itself and for community use. While some of this might be offset by income from the fitness centre, the extra cost of leasing the its equipment will cut into this quite significantly.

All this means that there is just not enough to pay the additional £60k or so for sports equipment. And this would have to come out of money intended for delivering the main school curriculum - something that the school would rather not do.

So it is actively looking for alternative ways of raising funds to pay for the equipment, including through other funding agencies.

In a letter to all old students of the school, Brian P Steele (Assistant Headteacher, in charge of the project) has given more details, and asked if former students would also be able to help in one of two ways:

• Donations for equipment: this is a simple appeal for donations to help with buying the sports equipment.
• Sponsorship Partners for the Fitness Suite: although the revenue will eventually help offset some of the running costs, the fitness machines themselves will cost £102k. To spread the financial load they would have to be leased at a cost of around £210k over ten years. The school is looking to save the leasing costs by looking for Sponsorship Partners to help provide these machines, and these savings would be ploughed back into running the Centre, which in turn will help free up cash to equip the rest of the Centre

In the old days of the Old Boys' Association, this is just the sort of challenge that they would rise to. It is, for instance, how they were able to buy the organ for the school hall. But now there is no such thing as an Old Boys' Association.

But there is the old boys and girls community that visits this Web site and it would be nice if we could help.