Council / SIC spent nearly £700k on using leisure facilities last financial year
It comes as a copy of the ‘Save Scalloway Pool’ petition is due to be handed to local councillors this evening
SHETLAND Islands Council (SIC) spent nearly £700,000 on using Shetland Recreational Trust’s (SRT) leisure facilities during the last financial year.
Figures obtained by Shetland News through freedom of information also show that the council has spent more than £511,000 in this financial year to date.
The SIC’s use of SRT’s leisure centres, for activities such as school swimming and PE lessons, was brought into focus earlier this year when the the trust announced its decision to close the Scalloway pool at the end of March.
Scalloway is one of eight leisure facilities the SRT operates in Shetland.
It comes as a ‘Save Scalloway Pool’ petition is set to be handed to local councillors this evening, and the chairman of Scalloway Community Council.
She did say however that the council – described as the largest customer of the recreational trust – was made aware by SRT in 2023 that the financial sustainability of the trust was uncertain and that a turnaround plan was being developed.
But Sandison clarified that there had not been “regular or repeated’” briefings to the council on the financial sustainability of the trust since the initial contact in 2023.
The figures show that the SIC spent £697,198 on using SRT facilities in the 2024/25 financial year, and just under £650,000 in 2023/24 .
The SIC said this spend could not be broken down into individual facilities or types of activities.
The figures also show that a total of 203 individual children attended the Scalloway pool in 2024/25 financial year for PE swimming lessons.
SIC leader Emma Macdonald previously said the council was limited in what it could do around the impending closure of the pool given it was not its facility.
Speaking in February, the councillor said she was in contact with the SRT and that the SIC’s education department was liaising over alternative arrangements.
The Scalloway pool is set to close at the end of March, with the SRT saying it needs to shut one of its facilities to enable the charity to be financially sustainable.
The news was announced in mid-January but it still remains unclear what the alternative arrangements for provision will be from April onwards.
It comes as almost 5,000 people have so far signed the petition to ‘save Scalloway Pool’.
Organisers of the petition said recently they believe SRT and its core funder Shetland Charitable Trust have been in contact with each other.
When contacted within the last week by Shetland News, representatives of both trusts had no updates to provide.
The SRT said at the time of the announcement that services will move to other pools, and all staff currently employed in Scalloway will be supported and given the opportunity to relocate to other SRT sites.
Its chief executive Robert Geddes had said that the organisation – which receives core funding from Shetland Charitable Trust – has been under financial pressure for many years.
But the SRT said at the time that even if “massively increased funding became available”, the trust would still have “unsustainable staffing challenges”.
An FAQs section on the decision to close Scalloway pool can be found on the SRT website.
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