It was a proud moment today at the Council’s Executive Committee.

We agreed outline plans to replace the current Gainsborough Sports Centre with a new sports and athletics centre and to build a new Aquatics Centre with smaller carbon footprint than Crown Pools.

The new, carbon-neutral, Sports and Athletics Centre at Gainsborough is set to have an 8-court sports hall, bigger gym and fitness suites, new extended provision for the Gymnastics Centre and an eight-lane athletics track as well as grass and artificial pitches and changing rooms.

The new Aquatics Centre will be a massive upgrade on Crown Pools with better leisure water (including flumes), a bigger gym, better facilities for fitness classes, soft play and a café.

Building these new facilities will be expensive, but we expect them to be cheaper to operate than our existing facilities and generate more revenue from visitors. We will also be looking at ways of bringing in funding from outside Ipswich to help pay for them, for example the Government’s Levelling Up Fund, Sport England and the Football Association.

More detailed plans and the final decisions to go ahead with building these exciting new facilities will follow, subject to funding.