Leisure chiefs at South Kesteven District Council are to meet today to decide whether to furlough staff following the imposition of the country's third national lockdown.

The council's head of leisure, Karen Whitfield, also told a council meeting today that the lockdown means SKDC will also have to revise its five-year business plan.

South Kesteven District Council took back control of its leisure centre facilities at the end of the year, after contracting out their management for some years, as previously reported by Nub News.

The council created its own company to run them instead, known as LeisureSK, which SKDC believes will improve their management and deliver savings.

Karen Whitfield told a council scrutiny committee meeting this morning that the changeover happened at the year-end and facilities re-opened yesterday, Monday January 4.

"Unfortunately, we were thwarted at the last hour with Tier 4 restrictions which has been superceded with the national lockdown. All our leisure centres are now closed."

LeisureSK, she continued, "would need to revisit its business plan" as a consequence of the lockdown and it would stage an 'urgent' meeting today to see if it would furlough the 'team.' Its five-year business plan would also be 'refined' before going to a council committee meeting in February and work was to start on that. LeisureSK now had a 'full-suite' of company directors, including a non-executive director who has significant experience of the leisure sector. A TUPE transfer of staff from the former leisure centre operators had also concluded successfully. Karen Whifield said LeisureSK would continue with consultation forums with customers and others, as what took place when they were run by 1Life. She also said that with further lockdowns, the future and related planning was "tricky, with no crystal ball." But how LeisureSK was set up gave the council more influence over how costs can be mitigated. Previously, when centres were run by 1Life, the council paid "significant amounts of money" to 1Life, which included supporting their head office. "Even with leisure centres closed, there will be savings compared to from before," she added. The issue of the council's ambitious programme of new or upgraded leisure centres was not raised at the meeting.