Future of Holme Pierrepont

Holme Pierrepont, the National Watersports Centre, is owned by Nottinghamshire County Council, and leased to Sport England.

Sport England informed us last year that they wish to withdraw their support from Holme Pierrepont as a National Centre of Excellence.

So, we need to find a way to secure the future of Holme Pierrepont, in a way that provides maximum benefit to the community at the minimum cost to the local taxpayer.

We employed consultants, who came up with possible options, and we asked for your views on these options.

62% would like to see an extreme sports centre at Holme Pierrepont.

Many thanks for the responses to our survey about the future of the Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre.

Our survey gave 5 choices for future development.  We had 2,021 replies.

The choices and responses were:

2.9%  of respondents did not select an option.

These results need to be treated with a little caution.  There were instances of blocks of consecutively numbered responses voting for the same option, some of these were quite considerable.  And we recognise that those who voted are not a representative sample of the local population.

Many comments were made which asked for the retention and/or improvement of the existing facilities of both the white water run and the rowing lake.  There were lots of comments advocating a link with the Grantham Canal.  There were some comments that were critical of Sport England for withdrawing funding.

There were almost equal numbers of respondents who supported keeping the Centre as an elitist sport training venue and those wanting to see the Centre developed for the benefit of the community.  Some suggested that facilities could be developed for both these groups.

Councillor Chris Baron, Cabinet Member for Finance and Property, said: “I’m very interested to hear what people think and would like to thank those who took the time to respond.  We will look at the responses in detail and consider all the comments as we start to plan the future for the Centre.

"Once we have more definite plans for the future for Holme Pierrepont we will make them public.”

See background information about Holme Pierrepont.