LEISURE chiefs are two weeks away from deciding which company will partner Bolton Council in running the town's leisure centres.

Bids have been received from four firms promising to pump cash into the town's 12 ailing centres, some requiring millions of pounds to bring up to standard.

Among the bidders, as revealed in the Bolton Evening News, is Bolton Arena. But Keith Davies, the council's deputy director for education and culture, refused to name the other three for commercial reasons. The winning bidder will be named in the first week of March.

Mr Davies said: "We're now in our second stage of assessment and we're just making sure the bids meet our specifications. All of the bidders are nationally established leisure operators."

He would not say how well Bolton Arena's bid had been received. Its bid is seen as controversial as the Arena has to be partly funded by taxpayers by a monthly subsidy and only breaks even. Its bosses will have to explain where they will find the money to improve and operate the leisure centres, which would still be owned by the council.

Horwich Leisure Centre is in need of the greatest investment. Together with the Excel Centre and Farnworth Leisure Centre, it will be the first to be run by the new public-private partnership.

The centres at Westhoughton, Deane, Turton, Sharples, Kearsley, Hayward, Little Lever, Harper Green and Withins would follow. Mr Davies said private sector involvement was the only option left to the council in its bid to turn around the fortunes of the leisure centres.

Bolton Council would still own the buildings but the successful private company would plough cash into revamping and running them.

Mr Davies said Arena chiefs, if successful, would not be able to link their complex with the leisure centres.

Both would have to be run and financed independently of each other which means the subsidies being handed to Bolton Arena by the council could not be used to finance the leisure centres.