Madam,

With 31 March being the first anniversary of the closure of Bodlondeb, reading your online article ‘Use of leisure centres hit by lack of maintenance ‘, I was struck with a sad sense of deja vu. The county council’s reasons for closure included a move towards care at home and encouraging people to take more responsibility for their own health.

Now it seems the county council is stripping away one of the main ways of keeping in shape by underfunding the county’s leisure centres.

Yes, one or two private gyms have opened up in Aberystwyth but, being specifically gyms, I don’t believe they generally include swimming pools, squash courts etc, so are not a direct replacement.

There are however, I presume, a number of national chains who may be tempted to open in Ceredigion to provide these services if there is a gap in the market and the county council is in a position to engineer such a gap should they wish to.

It’s a story we’ve seen before: starve a service of funds until it deteriorates. If fewer people use the new, degraded service then the county council claims it is no longer viable and cuts it and puts it out to the private sector.

A case of ‘the county council giveth and the county council taketh away’. We can all see what austerity has done to funding, but there must come a point where we have to ask ourselves: “what are we paying our council tax for?”

Yours etc, George Holloway, Rhoshendre, Waunfawr, Aberystwyth.

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