Young people make over a million visits to Islington leisure centres

11.44.45am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 10th Jun 2008

Ursula Woolley, Executive Member for Children, and Ruth Polling, Executive Member for Leisure, enjoy Archway Pool with two of the borough's young people.

New figures from Aquaterra, the Council's partner in providing leisure services, reveal that increasing numbers of young people are using local leisure centres - blowing the Council's targets out of the water. This week Lib Dem Executive Member for Leisure, Councillor Ruth Polling welcomed the news and congratulated Aquaterra for attracting so many young people.

Figures show that over 650,000 young people visited Islington's leisure facilities in the last year. In addition, 278,000 visited leisure centres with their school, and a further 70,000 as part of extra-curricular school activities. These numbers are up on previous years, and far exceed Aquaterra's visitor targets.

Councillor Ruth Polling said:

"These figures show that our young people have discovered how much our leisure centres have to offer them and are visiting regularly. Islington's seven leisure centres offer a huge range of activities for young people - everything from swimming to ice skating, martial arts to climbing.

""The Liberal Democrats have made it a priority to improve leisure facilities in the borough, so it's brilliant that so many young people are playing sports and using leisure centres in Islington. And we have kept prices low so everyone can take part.

"Our massive investment in improving our facilities is designed to attract even more young people in the future. We've already put brand new facilities into the borough, like the new astroturf pitches at Rosemary Gardens - and we're about to start the major renovations of Finsbury Leisure Centre and the Sobell. And we have kept prices low so everyone can take part.

"Our leisure centres do a fantastic job of putting on the sort of activities that young people want and getting more young people involved in sport. I would encourage all young people to pop into their local centre to see what's on."