Damage caused by a fire at Highbury Leisure Centre

• THE fire at Highbury Leisure Centre has, of course, been a huge blow to the community, Islington Council and GLL – the incident coming just after the completion of extensive refurbishment of the centre, (Nine months after blaze there’s no sign of Highbury Leisure Centre pool reopening, June 21).

Your readers can rest assured that we have been extremely busy behind the scenes. In the weeks immediately following the fire, the priority was to restore partial service at the centre as quickly as possible.

Once the safe areas of the building were confirmed, these spaces were configured to provide gym and fitness classes and reopened just 10 weeks after the fire.

But due to the extent of the fire, it was clear from the outset that restoring the pool hall would be a long-term project. Our focus shifted to the pool hall at the beginning of the year, following the reopening of the gym.

The first thing we needed to do was accurately survey the damage and ascertain how much of the remaining infrastructure could be reused, and how much needed replacing. We also needed to ensure it is safe for rebuilding work to begin.

We are all keen for this work to get under way quickly, and understand that some people in the community may be frustrated at the lack of visible demolition and construction work on-site. But we have to do things the right way.

We want to reassure residents we are working through the necessary processes for the first phase of the recovery programme, from making the site safe to commissioning professional services and extensive assessments for structural and conservation issues.

We have also been identifying contractors for the design-and-build phase, and liaising with the council’s planning department.

The good news is that survey results recently confirmed that much of the steelwork in the roof was not damaged by the fire and will not need to be replaced, which we hope will reduce the timeline of the rebuild.

Our next steps involve investigative work on the pool plant and the pool tanks, which are full of debris. Once this is complete we can finalise a full scope of works and embark on the next stage of the rebuild process.

Our best estimate at the moment is that we will be able to reopen the pool by early 2021, but given the scale and complexity of this restoration and rebuild project, there are a number of risk factors that could affect this. We will be updating people as the project progresses.

We would like to thank everyone again for their continued patience as we push ahead with the reinstatement of the pools at Highbury Leisure Centre.

CLLR JANET BURGESS
Executive member for health and social care, Islington Council

PAUL LISTER
Head of service (London), GLL