Today the final part of the Dulwich Leisure Centre renovation reopened, the gym. Its’ been a long haul since we promised in our Lib Dem 2006 election manifesto to completely renovate it. No one else made that promise so at the time it felt brave. After more than 50 years of no investment under Labour it would take a huge investment to fix. To complicate things we knew that as the building is listed it would need full planning permission that English Heritage would be happy to approve.

We won that election and set the process of getting the centre renovated.

It’s been a long wait while all the permissions and planning and consulting widely with literally thousands of people in East Dulwich about what they wanted from a renovated centre. The works seemed to slow down after the 2010 elections but finally the centre was fully reopened today and £6.2M investment fully delivered. It looks and feels fab.

And people say politics is a waste of time and makes no difference!

Do take a look and try it out and let me know what you think.