A new breed of leisure centre – catering for people with dementia and other special needs – opened in Crewe last month. The £15m facility is in line with Sport England’s new strategy of creating inclusive community hubs

The newly opened £15m Crewe Lifestyle Centre is more than just a leisure facility. Covering 7,800sq m (83,959sq ft) across two storeys, the building has been designed as a ‘next generation’ community hub – bringing together a range of different services under one roof.

As well as sport and fitness facilities, the Lifestyle Centre houses a new library, a family services centre, a café and office space. There are also day-care facilities for adults with learning disabilities and other complex needs, such as autism and sensory impairment.

One of the centre’s special features is a dementia garden – a therapeutic, enclosed and safe area for vulnerable adults. The primary purpose of the garden is to provide sensory stimulation through sounds, sights, touch and smells gained from the grasses, water features and flowers.

The centre’s sports facilities are managed by leisure trust Everybody Sport & Recreation and have been made accessible for those with special needs, including the 25m (82ft), eight-lane swimming pool and a 17m learner pool. Each pool has elevated platforms and access to its own advanced hydraulic wheelchair lift to aid disabled and mobility-impaired users, making the pools accessible to swimmers of all abilities.

Other spaces include a four-court, multi-purpose sports hall and group fitness studios. There’s also a 100-station health and fitness club fitted out by Matrix Fitness – featuring a selection of Inclusive Fitness Initiative-accredited (disability friendly) equipment. There are also separate changing facilities for wet and dry leisure use, with dedicated changing facilities for customers with disabilities.

INCLUSIVE ACCESS
A key motivation for the creation of a centralised hub was to provide a place where people with special needs could build their confidence and become physically active. Co-locating the council’s adult services department alongside sports amenities – making the sports provision more familiar to care services users – has been identified as one way of achieving this goal.

A special feature of the build is that it’s one of the first centres to cater for people living with dementia and it allows them to access all the facilities within the building independently.

According to Paul Winrow, operations director at Everybody Sport & Recreation, having different services sitting side by side will lower the barrier for people with disabilities to try them out.

“The idea is to provide a place where those who use adult and social day-care spaces are encouraged to use other council facilities too, in order to help them enrich their lives,” he says. “As well as nudging them to sports, the intention is to make users familiar with the library and everything else that the council offers. The addition of the café means that the Lifestyle Centre is a place where people can spend the entire day.”

Winrow adds that as well as increasing participation numbers among special populations, the joined up services have produced much needed operational cost savings for the council at a time when public finances are under increased pressure. The opening of the new centre meant that the council was able to mothball three ageing leisure centres and concentrate operations on one site.

“There have been significant savings – there’s no doubt about that,” Winrow says. “We had ageing leisure and social care stock which was costing a lot in maintenance. Bringing those sites under one roof, and into a modern building, means we have eliminated those costs entirely.

“The old Crewe Swimming Pool, for example, was housed in a 1940s building. Accessibility was poor – it wasn’t inclusive in any shape or form – and the gym was rather disjointed. There were no exercise studios either, so it simply wasn’t fit for purpose as a modern facility catering for the range of users we have.”

The amalgamation of three separate sites into one has also been wholly positive for membership numbers. “When the three sites operated separately, we had 900 members across them,” Winrow reveals. “Now that we’ve combined the three, our membership stands at more than 2,500. So we’ve trebled the membership in three months.”

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A new breed of leisure centre – catering for people with dementia and other special needs – has opened in Crewe.

Tom Walker, managing editor, Sports Management Paul Winrow, Operations Director, Lifestyles David Spoors, associate, Pozzoni Architecture,leisure centre, dementia, special needs, Crewe, £15m facility, Sport England’s new strategy of creating inclusive community hubs, Crewe Lifestyle