News

Field Changing rooms and Bar

Bubwith Daily Mile

The trustees of the Leisure Centre Charity are pleased to add their congratulations to Bubwith White Swan CC for the achievement of winning the Foss Evening League 2022.

To re-establish the cricket team on the Bubwith cricket field, there is a requirement for a volunteer grounds person, specifically to look after the cricket square. The Cricket Club has not maintained the square this year, and it might take two years careful work before its fit for play in 2024 season. Obviously, the sooner work is restarted the sooner the square will become viable. Unfortunately, none of the current cricket team is available to take on this role.

Perhaps a parent/grandparent of a cricket-mad young person might like to be part of the cricket set-up? Is there a demand for junior cricket in the village? BLSC would welcome any expansion of cricket to involve more residents.

The contractors working on the Daily Mile have assured the trustees that the outfield will have recovered from their work by spring 2023 and will therefore be available for play summer 2023.

It is unfortunate that the Daily Mile project could not be completed as scheduled in 2021 but Sport England’s objection created a year long delay. This delay meant the cricket field was not available in 2022 causing the cricket team to find alternative facilities for this season – funded in part at an average of £75 per match by BLSC Charity.

Meanwhile ever-increasing costs for materials and labour, affecting all areas of the construction industry, has seen the overall cost of the Daily Mile project rise by some £32000, which has all but wiped out the Charity’s reserves. With maintenance work required on the fabric of the building and plans for the cycle pump track, new childrens play area and enhanced terrace still in the pipeline, there is a requirement for urgent replenishment of funds.

If you can help with the cricket field, please contact Neil Readman on either 07860 350858 or .

If you would like to learn more about opportunities to help BLSC in any capacity, then please contact any of the current Officers or Trustees who will be happy to answer any queries. Telephone:  01757 288299 or Email: 

September 2022.

A ball strike risk assessment was put forward by the independent company, this stated that the current layout of cricket showed an extreme risk of people being hit by a cricket ball. They then stated that, to counter this risk, nets/fencing of 14 metres would  need to be erected around the pitch on 3 sides, the the approximate cost of such work is estimated to be in the order of £50,000 and obviously these nets would need to be left in place all year around, as taking them up and down would be a job for a contractor.

We have passed this assessment to our insurance company, Zurich, which has responded stating that if these concerns were not mitigated by fencing, then related claims would be invalid.

As the year progresses, 2022 seems to be bringing a mood of optimism as regards Covid-19 which I am sure we all welcome. We have been constrained at the Leisure Centre and had to cancel several planned events. We now are receiving requests for bookings, our calendar is filling up.

The Treehouse Nursery have now moved to Bubwith Primary School and we wish them success, their time here seems to have gone well and we are delighted they continue to provide a valuable service to the village and our young families. This does mean that we will  have the Upstairs Room as well as the hall and bar available for hire during the daytime, so if any of you know of any organisation looking for rooms to hire for classes or other activities do get in touch.

We have great news that planning has now been granted for our outdoor initiative and we now have the letter from ERYC planning department with confirmation and details of the Council’s permission for our outdoor plans to introduce a perimeter track, The Bubwith Daily Mile, an extended terrace, and the construction of BMX track and learner cycling area at the southern end of the field. There will be a good deal of work yet for us to bring that to fruition, but we can look forward now to improving facilities for everyone.

We welcome two new trustees in Richard Dunlop and Steve Johnston, co-opted this month. If you are interested in joining us, look out for the AGM on Thursday, 6.30pm on 17th March, or approach me or any of the other trustees.

Happy New Year from us all, Dr Richard Moore, chair.

We welcome you all back- we are fully Covid secure.

Things are certainly starting to look more positive as restrictions lift, the weather improves and vaccinations roll out across the UK.

We are happy to accommodate groups of more than six now, we just ask people to be sensible.

We want to make sure we’re doing our bit as the country gets back to normal, so in line with the most recent guidelines and the government’s advice to continue wearing masks now they are optional, we’ll be recommending our Users wear a mask or visor in the Centre if they are able to do so, while Covid cases remain high across the country. Of course, this is now entirely up to individuals.

However, we will be asking our Staff to continue wearing a mask or visor while on duty in the Centre.

We will be also be keeping social distancing measures and hand sanitising around for a little while longer yet, while we wait for infection rates to fall and it’s a little safer for us all.

The Bubwith Leisure Centre Committee

18th July, 2021

What a strange year this has been. Looking back at last year’s report, there is no mention of Covid-19. Our minds were on Harry Gration and the finishing touches to the refurbishment of the hall, we were looking forward to a plethora of forthcoming events! Little did we know what was to come.

Outdoor activities were seriously curtailed; cricket and football, led by Harry Collins and Rob Joy respectively, managed only a fraction of their usual play, and even tennis with Andy Corfield in charge this year, found themselves restricted, but did manage to upgrade their floodlights. But for a while we did have a popular bootcamp on the field, and there is hope for its return, plus outdoor Zumba.

Indoor activities were hit even harder. We lost Alison Walker’s Pilates after the first lockdown, but have recruited Yvonne from body-motion with a mixture of widely spaced lessons in the hall, and Zoom, depending on government regulations. Sophie Brooke (Feathersteps) managed a few private lessons when permitted, but Hayley Patrick-Copeland (Evolution) and Neil Blakeway (Karate) have largely been unable to operate, and the short mat bowlers abandoned all hope! Louise Jay (Zumba) has made a start here, but the Youth club has hibernated, although there are moves from the Parish Council to recruit a new Youth Leader for the future when operations resume. Allsortz and Kaleidoscope have largely desisted too, we hope all previous activities will be able to get back underway soon.

Throughout and in a very hit and miss manner, our loyal employees and friends Paul White and Michelle Young have continued to keep the building ticking over, so that the task of re-opening, when it comes, will not be too daunting or unnecessarily expensive. Sheila Suddaby and Shirley Moore have preserved the high kitchen standards. We are now fully Covid-ready with twelve sanitisers installed, thanks to Barry Carpus and David Southworth, the bar has sneeze-guards, and we can take orders and payment at the table if required.

One really encouraging sign is that The Treehouse Nursery came to Bubwith, to provide a comprehensive service for our little ones and their parents, occupying the upstairs floor. It has been a difficult first year for them, getting established in a pandemic, but the signs are improving for the future. The evenings would have normally seen a series of occupiers upstairs for smaller classes, meetings etc, but social distancing put paid to that.

The committee did introduce some improvements upstairs, with revision of space to make a safer area for Treehouse and create a secure storage for Allsortz. Redecorations and introduction of an air conditioning/heating unit brought it up to standard, bearing in mind our ambitions to Raise the Roof, introduce windows and a lift. This project, referred to as Phase 2, has had to be set aside as all capital spending from the grant awarding bodies has been diverted to helping mitigate the effects of Covid.

We did take note, however, of the need to consult the community in advance of any further grant applications, and to this end in July and August we conducted an on-line survey enabled by officers of ERYC. Our only major success in seeking funds had been to gain support of Sport England to the sum of £50,000 towards Phase 2. In addition, they engaged on our behalf the services of Kelly Gordon, a consultant, who helped us plan and interpret The Survey.

Not wishing to waste the time in lockdown, we set about upgrading what we could afford to do downstairs. Our ladies and gents’ toilets were thirty years old and looked it, so with the help of funds from Garfield Weston, ERYC commuted sum, and Bernard Sunley, we raised the money to pay for full refurbishment done by Jonny Hart and his company from Hull. Thanks to Barry Carpus and Steve Young for the fund-raising, and Barry for project-managing the job. We think they have the “wow” factor, the new toilets that is.

Harts also replaced the toilets in the changing rooms and re-fitted the showers, but the rest was a decorative do-it-yourself job, so thanks to all participants, including Lizanne and David Southworth, Shaun Thompson, and Maurice and Linda Downey. It kept us busy, but the main decorating jobs, upstairs and downstairs, we left to the professional services of Richard Madge, so we have now covered the majority of the dark green paintwork which had become dated and depressing.

Back to that Survey then; although it did provide support for our upstairs plans, it also highlighted the lack of outside interest on the field. It has long been an ambition to move the children’s playground away from the drive, and somehow gain some more car parking space. To gain land at the north end of the field we had already abandoned the northern third of the “square” and now plan to extend it southwards, giving scope to extend the terrace into a better sitting area for spectators, and maybe introduce a café culture during the day in the future.

Walking running and cycling were the demands, and Zoom discussions and a visit by Kelly brought us to the ideas of a perimeter track around the cricket and football pitches, plus a cycling area with pump track and proficiency area at the south end of the field. As these are all healthy outdoor activities, we felt that there is a better chance of raising the funds, and to this end Steve and myself have been hard at the grant applications. Huge thanks to Lizanne for major input to the design, and to David for putting it on paper and to Geoff Cunningham; we would struggle without his expert guidance for refinements to the plans and for liaising with the planning department at ERYC. Harry Collins and Mike Suddaby have worked through measurements and added valuable opinion.

So now we are waiting, both for news of our grant applications, and for permission to re-open. To that end Maurice and Paul have been beavering away to make new arrangements for the bar supplies, and have signed us up with H B Clark of Hull as wholesalers. They already supply The White Swan in the village so we aim to streamline services to enable convenient deliveries of goods when needed. Keeping the bar hardware in good condition has been undertaken by Paul, and the rest of the building has been maintained by Barry, including a regime of fire checks since a major upgrade of our fire protection system also installed this year. We even managed to divert a downpipe into a drain rather than over the terrace!

Funds have been closely monitored by Steve, who has incorporated government funding with small grant sums to keep the ship afloat. His report may well show that, despite all this expenditure, we have a little more in hand at the end of the year than the start. We have, through Lizanne and Cathi Poole respectively, managed to improve our website and Facebook publicity, enhanced by a 360- degree tour of the premises courtesy of Darryl Brooks photography.

With many thanks we say goodbye as trustees to Carol Hall and Becki Farrow, in both cases due to family commitments, and we are delighted that they still wish to help as volunteers when time allows. We are indebted to Bubwith Parish Council, and East Riding Council for their continued support. We couldn’t do any of this without the support and assistance of our families, for which we are very grateful.

We also look forward to the premises opening again, we already have a number of enquiries from potential new class teachers, and from hirers wishing to hold celebrations and functions. We are exploring our potential to hold better parties, including weddings. New ideas include drama, particularly with children in mind, sounds exciting. Onwards and upwards.

Richard Moore.                                                                                                                            18^th March 2021

We would love to share our plans for the future of the Playground and Outside Areas of the Bubwith Leisure and Sports Centre. Click here to find out more.