Why Is FHDC Paying 53% of the Folkestone Pool Rebuild (£2.4m of £4.5m) Without Owning the Sports Centre?

At last night’s Full Council, Cllr Nicola Keen cut to the simplest version of the Folkestone Sports Centre row: why is Folkestone & Hythe District Council being asked to fund more than half the cost of the pool refurbishment, when the sports centre is not a council asset?

The arithmetic is hard to dodge. In his response, Council leader Cllr Jim Martin said the pool works alone are “currently estimated” at £4.5m. The council is considering a £2.4m capital grant. That is about 53% of the stated pool-only cost — before any spending on the rest of the building.

Only after making that point did Keen widen the challenge: if £2.4m can be contemplated now, why could the council not buy the centre when it changed hands in May 2025 for £1,484,277?

What the council says it is being asked to fund

FHDC has confirmed publicly that, after The Sports Trust bought the centre “last May”, the council has been asked for a one-off £2.4m grant towards refurbishing the Radnor Park Avenue pool, changing rooms and pool plant machinery, plus solar roof panels. The council says this capital grant would replace the previous £150,000 annual grant paid to the former charity operator before the site closed in August 2024.

That change matters. A recurring subsidy is an open-ended political headache; a single capital grant can be packaged as a one-time intervention with a defined scope — and with strings attached.

Martin’s defence: ownership, insolvency, and legal limits

Martin’s central argument was that the two pools are not comparable because Hythe Pool is “owned and operated by this council”, while Folkestone Sports Centre was “owned and operated by an external charitable trust”. In his view, the council could not treat them as interchangeable choices.

He also stressed that the collapse of the former Folkestone operator was driven by lenders, and that additional council funding at the end would not have rescued the facility. His claim was that money would have been swallowed by creditors — “the banks and the other debtors” — rather than reopening the doors.

On the legal side, Martin said there are limits “financially and legally … under the subsidy control regulations” on what the council can lawfully do for an external operator. (In plain English: the state cannot simply hand large sums to one operator if it distorts competition, without a defensible legal basis.)

Independent context helps here. Christie & Co, instructed to sell the site, reported that Folkestone Sports Centre Trust Limited was placed into administration at the end of July 2024 and the property was marketed on behalf of administrators at Opus Restructuring.

The uncomfortable question Keen was really asking

Even if you accept Martin’s “ownership” distinction, Keen’s point remains: a majority public contribution without ownership raises a control problem.

If taxpayers underwrite roughly 53% of the pool works, residents will reasonably expect clear answers on what they get back in return — not just a reopened pool, but enforceable guarantees on access, affordability and community use.

This is exactly where the local debate is now heading. In a detailed January analysis, Shepway Vox argued that The Sports Trust is “asset-rich but cash-poor” and, on its own accounts, is unlikely to be able to self-fund a £2.4m refurbishment without major external help. The same piece says a draft grant agreement includes safeguards such as staged payments, open-book cost verification, procurement requirements, and clawback clauses if the pool does not reopen or closes prematurely.

Those protections matter — but they also underline why Keen pressed the “more than half” point. If the council is paying the majority share, the conditions need to be tough enough to make the public feel it is paying for public benefit, not simply financing someone else’s asset.

Hythe’s £6m — and where that money is said to come from

Keen contrasted Folkestone with Hythe, where FHDC says it is proposed that £6m is set aside for Hythe Pool works in the council’s 2026/27 capital budget.

The council adds a key qualifier: that £6m “could be offset” by £5.5m in a Section 106 agreement (developer contributions secured through planning permissions), plus a land offer, with the money earmarked for sport and leisure improvements “with priority given to Hythe”.

So the council’s argument is that Hythe has a clearer funding pipeline tied to development contributions — while Folkestone is being approached through a capital grant model instead of ongoing subsidy.

“Sports centre or health club?”

Keen’s supplementary question went to the heart of trust: if the sports centre reopens, will it remain a community facility in price and purpose, or drift into a “health club” offer that schools and ordinary residents cannot afford?

Martin said the intention of the operators is to run community sports facilities, but he would not offer guarantees, pointing to the previous trust which “promised us the earth” and still collapsed.

The “surplus land” pressure point

A second argument is now running alongside the grant: should the Sports Trust be expected to raise part of the money from its own estate, rather than relying so heavily on council funding?

In another January investigation, Shepway Vox notes that the Land Registry title register records The Sports Trust as proprietor and a “price paid” of £1,484,277 on 21 May 2025 (noting this may relate to this and related titles), and argues councillors should ask — publicly — whether any part of the land is genuinely surplus, what constraints apply (covenants/charity law), and what contribution the Trust can realistically make from its own assets and fundraising.

What happens next

The council says the Folkestone grant funding mix (including Section 106 and capital funding) will be set out in the capital programme as part of next month’s budget cycle.

By then, councillors will need to decide whether paying around 53% of the pool works without owning the site is justified — and if it is, whether the deal is watertight: transparent costs, enforceable community access, and genuine protection if history repeats itself.

The Shepway Vox Team

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