Kearsley: Deal struck on bowling club and community centre

This will see Kearsley Park Bowling Club on Thomas More Close rebuilt and extended, while a long vacant community centre on Crompton Road in Prestolee will also be brought back to use.

The two centres are set to receive funding after an agreement struck between One Kearsley, which saw three councillors elected in May’s election, and the ruling Labour Group.

One Kearsley leader Cllr Paul Heslop said: “The key areas that we were able to secure from Labour included bringing back a moth-balled community centre in Prestolee along with the rebuilding of our Bowling Club and extending it to include a community use.”

Kearsley Park Bowling Club (Image: Google Maps)

He added: “We feel that One Kearsley did well out of our negotiations, especially given Labour’s 26 seat success against the Tories 16 seats.

“We believe that this is in large part due to a tacit belief on the Labour benches that previous cuts to Kearsley’s services and amenities went too far.”

This agreement came after Cllr Heslop and his colleagues had argued for some time for the revival and expansion of community facilities in their areas.

They had also argued for more council meetings to be opened up for public scrutiny. 

The community centre of Crompton Road, Prestolee (Image: Google Maps)

One Kearsley’s Cllr Debbie Newall explained that she had long been concerned about the Prestolee centre, which had previously been occupied by the Zac’s charity.

She said: “It’s just been vacant so we’ve been trying for about the last 18 months to reinvent it as a community hub.

“We want the money to get it back up to standard and get people in there.”

Turing to the bowling club, she added: “The total cost comes in at around £300,000 so we said if we could get the funding it would be a great resource to use as a community hub.

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“And the bowlers are quite happy with it, as long as they’ve got their bowling their happy for it to be used this way.”

Labour’s Cllr Nick Peel, who was confirmed as leader of the council with the support of his own party as well as that of One Kearsley at a meeting the week after May’s local elections said he hoped this could be part of a wider effort to revive the borough’s districts.

He said: “We’ve listened very carefully to the arguments made by One Kearsley about the lack of improvements to community facilities over the last few years and we feel this can be part of our plan to make improvements to the various districts all around our borough.”