While many aspects of Manx life return to normal, some of the National Sports Centre’s facilities remain closed.

As well as the flumes, which have been out of use for nearly two years, the centre’s cafe has still not reopened post Covid-19.

Problems with the manufacture and installation of the new flumes has caused a lengthy delay to the completion of the project, which was meant to reopen last May.

In this week’s Tynwald written answers, Jason Moorhouse (Arbory, Castletown and Malew), asked Education, Sport and Culture Minister Dr Alex Allinson whether the NSC’s leisure pool and flumes will reopen before the end of the school holidays and how much money has been lost because of their closure.

Dr Allinson, who inherited the flume fiasco from his predecessor, Graham Cregeen, was forced to admit that the flumes would not be opening before the island’s schools return on Wednesday, September 9.

’A paper has been submitted to Treasury confirming the basis of the proposed agreement with the contractors involved in the project to rectify the issues regarding the flumes,’ Dr Allinson said.

He added: ’It is not possible to accurately advise on the total loss of revenue as a result of the closure of the leisure pool.

’Swimming admissions are not split by each pool so there exists no historical data with a breakdown of income exclusively for the leisure pool. Income is recorded as one amount for the swimming pools regardless of the pool or pools that a customer chooses to swim in.’

However, Dr Allinson did revealed that the total income from the pools in 2017/18, the last time all of the pools were open, was £472,696.

For the seven months between August 18 2019, when the main pool opened, and March 22 2020 when the NSC closed because of Covid-19, the income was £167,802.

However, by taking the 2019/20 figures and translating them into figures reflecting a 12-month opening, the total income would have been £287,660.

The NSC’s cafe has yet to reopen.

After the Manx Independent was contacted by a reader who was concerned that the cafe hasn’t reopened since Covid-19, we were told by the government that ’is the department’s intention to provide an alternative model of service delivery for a café at the NSC and further details of this will be released in due course’.

vending

A spokesman added: ’Therefore the café will remain closed until further notice but customers of the NSC are welcome to use the table and chairs in the area to consume any refreshments from the vending machines or alternatively bring in their own food / drinks to have following their exercise or activity.’

However, when we asked if that meant there had been or would be job cuts, the government gave no response.