Splash Refurbishment Proposals - Background

Built in Stockton Town Centre, Splash has proved to be an extremely popular facility, attracting an increasing number of visitors year on year.

Given its central location close to the main shopping centre, its good car parking and public transport links, Splash is an ideal location for visitors to combine leisure and shopping easily, thereby increasing the economic vitality of the town centre.

It was therefore, proposed that opportunities to expand the already successful facility should be maximised in order to build upon the growing customer base and maintain the strategy of ensuring that there are wet and dry facilities in each of the three major townships of Stockton, Billingham and Thornaby.

At its meeting of 15th June 2006 Cabinet endorsed the proposals and agreed to a major investment in new and more diverse leisure facilities at a single site location in Stockton by extending the existing Splash site.

At this time it was also agreed to close Stockton Sports Centre as the building and floodlit pitches were in a declining state, (both being past their natural lifespan) and did not meet modern day customer demands. Research demonstrated that there was a very low local use of the facility and therefore it was decided to extend Splash (which is in the same ward as Stockton Sports Centre) in order to create a state of the art leisure centre. Concurrently developments at several secondary schools over the past five years have also increased access to sports halls and artificial, floodlit sports areas.

Tees Active staff are working sensitively with user groups at Stockton Sports Centre to help them relocate to other facilities as it will not re-open after the festive break.