Plans to make a raft of cuts at West Dunbartonshire Leisure Trust look set to be scrapped after councillors agreed the local authority will fill the gap.
The trust which manages leisure, sport and events across West Dunbartonshire, was facing making £225,000 of cuts to services, including merging Active Schools and Sports Development, after losing over £2.5million in income.
This £48,000 saving would have seen the loss of five posts.
Bosses were also considering closing swimming pools during quieter hours to cut down lifeguard costs.
Under the plans, an early years programme, which sees every council nursery youngster receive an activity session a year, would also have been axed.
The trust has been grappling with the spiralling cost of the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen the shutdown of pools, gyms and clubs for the majority of the past year.
Chiefs were tasked with finding an anticipated £1.054m to fill its spending gap, which is based on projections that income will be down by 30 percent over the next year.
However, at a corporate services committee meeting this morning, council leader Jonathan McColl tabled a motion, which was unanimously agreed and means these efficiency savings will not be made.
The council pays a management fee to the trust every year, which for 2021/22 was expected to be £3.879m, and the council agreed that this will be increased to meet the £225,000 gap.
The trust was planning to meet the £1m deficit by also using £600,000 of reserves and asking the council to use Scottish Government funding to fill a £229,358 shortfall but the meeting heard that funding for the latter has now been found.
The agreement made this morning will need to be ratified by the full council at its budget setting meeting next month.
Councillor McColl said: “I think we all have the same concerns and we don’t want to see this reduction, especially when we don’t have details over about what the impact will be.
“There’s a risk to services that will be far too important as we move out of lockdown.”
Despite its financial struggles, the trust says it expects the position “to improve significantly once operations are hopefully back to normal in 2022/23”.
