Appetite to get fitter is strong says Amber Valley leisure centres manager

Alex Greaves, contract manager at Alfreton Leisure Centre, Ripley Leisure Centre and William Gregg VC Leisure Centre in Heanor, said: “Our recent surveys conducted over our social media sites suggest that a lot of our communities have seen a decrease in their activity levels so we are looking forward to supporting them in increasing their exercise.

"People have clearly missed their exercise and their children attending swimming lessons and other sports. The appetite to return is strong.”

When the facilities reopen on April 12, all measures to protect the public previously will be applied again. Alex said: “We had fantastic feedback from our members who highlighted how safe they felt and how at ease our teams made them feel.

“We're following government guidelines and we’ve got all the distancing and measures in place for our customers to feel safe in getting back to activity. Sessions will be pre-booked, social distancing will be maintained throughout, our thorough cleaning regimes will resume and our communication will inform all our customers what is expected of them during their visits.

"We tweaked our opening times during the last opening periods between government lockdowns and our times will continue at the amended times. This allows us to thoroughly clean our facilities each evening and do the additional Covid-19 cleaning that we implemented previously. We will of course continually review this and make adjustments where possible and where new guidance permits.”

"We’re delighted to be reopening our centres and we can’t wait to welcome everyone back.”

Visitor numbers were down when the centres reopened after the last lockdown. Alex, who joined the team at Alfreton Leisure Centre in June last year, said: “During our last opening period between lockdowns we saw our throughput drop to an average of 5,700 visits per week (September/ October 2021). For the previous period in 2020 the average throughput was 12,400 per week."

The three centres are operated by Places Leisure on behalf of Amber Valley Borough Council.

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