BADMINTON: No Strings – but what about the lights?
HUGH SULLIVAN
Badminton players who attend sessions at Summerfields Leisure centre have delivered a petition signed by over 100 of their number complaining to the centre’s management Freedom Leisure (FL) about the number of overhead lights which are out of action and the time taken to repair them, also about a leaking roof.
The sessions are known as No Strings, because no membership or other long term commitment is involved – it’s strictly pay and play. But, supervised by renowned coach Cathy Bargh, who is current World Masters Ladies Singles champion for her age group, they offer organised competition across the six available courts for up to 50 adults on each of three mornings a week.
There’s a wide range of standards – from near beginners to the seriously skilful and athletic, and from students (including around 40 juniors) to several veterans aged over 75. Overall, the aggregate number of sessions is calculated to top 700 every month.
Good play in such a fast-moving sport is dependent on adequate lighting, however, and this has become a significant problem as strip lights in the ceiling fail – mostly, it seems, because football is also played in the same arena in the evening, and a direct blow will naturally destroy the bulbs or other parts. At one point recently, over half the lights were out of action. Because of their height above the floor, they can only be replaced with a cherry picker, which has to be brought in for the task; even then, FL seem willing only to replace a proportion of them at any one time, and currently there are eight lights of the 28 out of action. That may not render any of the courts unplayable but makes their conditions at the very least uneven, with one end well lit and the other in comparative shadow.
The roof also leaks at one end of the arena after a bout of heavy rain, so that two courts become wet and dangerous to play on.
According to the petition organiser Sue Williams, Summerfields received a grant of £57,000 from Badminton England within the last decade to upgrade the facilities there, including the laying of a sprung floor. It’s a pity, she feels, that the grant did not extend to providing LED lighting as they have at Bexhill Sports centre (for one thing, they’d be much harder to hit); but there’s really no excuse for FL to fail to maintain the existing lights. Sue says that local staff members informed players last December that all the lights would be replaced “soon”, but it hasn’t happened in the six months since.
The local FL manager declined to make any comment when asked last week; their head office telephone appeared itself out of action when HIP called to enquire further.
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