Daventry Leisure Management firm throws in the towel

Soll Daventry Limited a charitable company who manage the Daventry Leisure Centre on behalf of Daventry District Council, are ceasing to trade due to money problems.

Soll Leisure operates separate charitable companies for each of its businesses with voluntary boards of trustees drawn from the community and businesses across Northamptonshire and neighboring counties.

Daventry District Council has been notified that SOLL Daventry Limited will cease to operate Daventry Leisure Centre and Daventry Sports Park within the next month.

The Council, as owners of the leisure centre in Lodge Road, sports park in Browns Road, tennis courts at New Street and sports pitches at Fishponds, Headlands and The Hollows, will ensure that all sites remain open and operational.

Residents are reassured that although the management of these facilities will change within the coming weeks, all services, including existing memberships and bookings, will not be affected and will continue as usual.

SOLL Daventry has managed the facilities on behalf of the Council since November 2006. Factors such as the recent recession and continuing economic challenges have contributed to increasing financial issues at these sites.

Daventry District Council’s Managing Director Simon Bovey said: “We appreciate hard times face us all. However the delivery of sports and leisure services are of paramount importance to the Council and residents should be assured that the operation of services will continue at all sites.”

Mark Jaggers, Managing Director of SOLL Daventry Limited said: “SOLL Daventry Limited has been managing the facilities for the last 3 years and would like to express our gratitude to the staff and customers during this time.Participation have increased significantly from 225,862 visits in 2006 to 345,701visits in the last year. Improvements in service have been reflected in Sport England Quest quality accreditation and gaining Investors in People status. With the Council and SOLL’s commitment to invest and SOLL’s management, the centres and service have been transformed over the past three years.

“SOLL operates on the basis of separate charitable companies for each of its businesses with voluntary boards of trustees drawn from the community and successful businesses across Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. These will continue unaffected by the decision in Daventry. SOLL Leisure Group will still be operating 6 leisure facilities with over 200 staff and a turnover of over £3m.”

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Daventry Hockey club win award

Daventry Hockey Club has received a prestigious award in recognition of its high coaching standards and development.

Clubs First is an England Hockey Board accreditation in national recognition of clubs that are committed to providing a safe and friendly hockey environment.

The award reflects the dedication of the club’s members to move Daventry Hockey Club forward, and has been achieved with the support of Daventry District Council’s Sports Development Team and England Hockey.

The club now wants to set up formalised school-club links with the South Northants and Daventry School Sport Partnership to help create further opportunities for young people to take part in Hockey within the partnership.

Shaun Waite, Sports Development Officer at Daventry District Council, said: “Daventry Hockey Club should be commended for achieving this accreditation.

“The award can be used to assure potential new players and their parents that exacting standards in welfare and coaching are being maintained at the club, and Daventry District Council was pleased to be able to lend its support.”

Daventry High Street Robbery

A woman was robbed in broad daylight last week after withdrawing cash in Daventry’s High Street. She had just withdrawn the money from a cash point, walked towards some nearby benches, and sat down. A man who was sitting next to her, lent over to stroke her dog. It was only after she got up to leave 20 minutes later it was discovered the money had been stolen.

The offense took place between 4.20pm and 4.45pm on April 8th, 2010, and police would like to speak to the offender described as white, male, between 30 and 40 years, 5ft 4ins tall of large build, and he had short dark brown hair and small dark brown eyes. He was wearing yellow t-shirt.

Daventry’s potholes will take longer to fill

Potholes throughout Northamptonshire will take up to six months to repair under plans to alter the road maintenance service.

The county’s roads were hit by widespread damage during the winter, Northamptonshire County Council said.

Its cabinet is to vote on whether severe holes should get longer-lasting repairs within five days instead of temporary work within 24 hours.

Minor defects, which are currently repaired within 28 days, could take up to six months.

‘Improve quality’

An additional £4m will also be invested in the first year of the scheme for carrying out preventative maintenance work on roads and paths, the council said.

Heather Smith, cabinet member for environment, growth and transport, said more than 8,000 defects were reported to the county council in February alone.

“What we need to do is improve the overall quality of the road network, so that by enhancing the structure they will be less susceptible to the damage that extreme conditions can cause,” she said.

“We have recognised the irritation of the public who see a quick and speedy repair resulting in the defect recurring in a short timescale.”

Last month, the council said the cost of repairing roads in Northamptonshire was set to top £120m and would take about 10 years to complete.

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Cautious Optimism from Iceland and help from UK Government is good news

Fears of Daventry losing the whole of the £6 million investment it still has locked in offshore Icelandic banks, was reduced last week.

In a statement issued by the Resolution Committee of Landsbanki Islands hf, the new bank established to windup the affairs of the bankrupt Landsbanki; they announced an agreement has been reached on the likely value of all the assets transferred from Landsbanki to the new state bank.

Estaimates that the recovery rate to the bank’s preferential creditors is higher than previously anticipated and expected to be almost 90% of the original investments.

A caveat was included in the statement saying, “It should always be borne in mind, however, that the estimated value of assets is subject to some uncertainty, for instance, due to future economic developments both within Iceland and abroad, which could impact the eventual value of the underlying assets.”

In a joint bulletin issued by the Local Government Association, they described these events as “Extremely significant in the process of winding-up the old banks”, and went on to say that the LGA had been closely associated with negotiations alongside the UK and Dutch authorities.  It was revealed that Local Government Finance Minister Barbara Follett, had written to the LGA agreeing to changes in accounting practices for those Local Authorities that were experiencing financial difficulties directly due to the Icelandic banking collapse. This it is thought will help LA’s in their forward budget planning for next year.

Call for Daventry’s market traders to adopt aggressive promo’s

Daventry Market Traders and Daventry District Council have been set a new challenge calling on them to “Adopt aggressive promotional tactics – like those used by supermarkets” if they want to survive the recession.

New ideas for promoting town markets came thick and fast from the 200 town planners attending the Action for Market Towns (AMT) annual conference last week (Tuesday 13 Oct) in Melton Mowbray.

Other suggestions included loyalty cards and use food sales and festivals to keep their centres flourishing. Chris Dare, AMT’s chief executive, said these communities could no longer rely on “hanging baskets and market stalls”.  Town centres had to identify unique selling points and take account of the changing fortunes of the local population. Many people in market towns, for example, have lost managerial posts in recent months.

Several towns have introduced loyalty cards, and AMT research shows that such schemes have boosted trade by at least 30 per cent for the stores involved. Some outlets reported a 200 per cent rise.
One opinion coming from the conference was that many market towns believe they are ignored by the Government, who have recently offered cash help to deal with empty shops for inner city areas.

The challenges set by the town planners at the conference puts into sharp focus recent cutbacks and restrictions being placed on Daventry market traders.

From September market traders have been forced to provide their own stalls have the extra chore of setting up before they can start to trade.

Introduced as a cost saving measure the move is expected to save taxpayers between £15,000 and £20,000 per year and according to Daventry District Council, will provide traders, “More flexibility and convenience in setting out their wares on the stalls, which must currently take place around Council working patterns.” Fees for market pitches are being pegged as a result of the decision.

According to local reports and the Daventry Weekly, some traders say they will eventually stop coming to Daventry’s two markets on Tuesday and Friday, however, it is thought the gaps they leave will very soon be filled with new traders.

Fruit and veg seller Stephen Elliott, said prior to the start of the new arrangements, “It has been very hard and is going to add an extra 45 minutes at the start of the day while we are setting it up. It is just an extra problem that we are going to have to face up.”

Jo Gilford, Corporate Manager for Public Space at Daventry District Council, after announcing the new maret arrangements said, “These measures are already commonplace at many other markets, including the Daventry Farmers Market. We discussed the proposals with stallholders and, although there were some traders who would prefer to continue with the existing arrangements, others have been very receptive to the plans. We continue to receive interest in the market from prospective stallholders who are aware of the change in arrangements.

Councillor Chris Over, Daventry District Council’s Economic, Regeneration & Employment Portfolio Holder, said: “We are continuing to explore ways of strengthening the market’s role in an expanding town and are in talks with the Daventry Town Centre Partnership to identify ways of developing the service in the future.”

It will be interesting to see if the town’s leaders can come up with their own innovative ways to help traders boost their sales perhaps idaventry readers can come up with even more?

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