The Sobell trampoline park

• COUNCILLOR Janet Burgess’s reply to my letter about the Sobell trampoline park is long on warm, cuddly phrases but extremely short on facts. (Trampoline park is major success, November 9).

When the council and Greenwich Leisure hacked the sports hall in half to create the tramp­oline park they promised the outcome of this would be to more than double the number of people using the centre and, particularly, that it would get more young people doing exercise. Is it achieving that?

Cllr Burgess quotes a nice big number of 158,000 visitors to the park so far, but is that the number of visits, rather than individual users? How many were using the centre before? How many of these are people who would not otherwise be exercising? Does it include parents who have to pay just to watch their children bounce?

It’s good to encourage groups to come in who are otherwise less likely to use leisure centres, to encourage teenage girls to engage in more physical exercise, to have sessions for schools and to allow children in at reduced rates (though really only for one evening a month). But how many are actually doing so?

And how many long-term, regular users have been forced out to make it possible? Because the impact of the tramp­oline park on the rest of the centre is significant: not just the football teams that have disappeared, but when the park is closed – from 7pm most evenings – the whole place can feel more like a ghost town than a vibrant community sports centre.

I’m delighted that Cllr Burgess is so proud of her facility, but we need to keep asking questions until the council has the decency to give us some real answers. Is the trampoline park actually achieving its goals? If it’s not, then the council should admit it and look at how to improve the situation. If it is, perhaps the rest of us could be proud too.

ANDREW MYER
Islington Green Party