London & South East

Making exercise accessible for all

Horley Leisure Centre

The £9 million Horley Leisure Centre opened its doors for the first time on Monday 9th January 2012.

Located in Anderson Way on Court Lodge Road, the centre replaces the existing Horley Anderson centre, which opened in 1974.

The new state-of-the art facility boasts a range of exciting facilities, including a 25 metre six-lane swimming pool with ramped access for disabled users, a teaching pool and a fitness gym with 45 exercise stations and free weights. Additional features include a four-court multiuse sports hall and an exercise and dance studio, along with separate male, female, family, group and disabled changing areas.

Comprising approximately 2,500 sq ft of space, the timber frame building is spread over two floors and has incorporated a range of highly sustainable features. These include a biomass boiler with a burner that is suitable for woodchips and wood pellet, photovoltaic cells and a lighting scheme based on daylight saving and PIR sensors.

Landscaping has included the provision of cycle parking and 150 car parking spaces, which are shared with the neighbouring Horley Town Football Club.

Executive Member for Healthy Communities, Councillor Adam De Save, said:

“The Council has invested £9 milion in the development of the new Horley Leisure Centre, which will vastly improve sport and leisure opportunities for the local people.

“The centre looks amazing and provides fantastic new facilities to help people of all ages and abilities keep healthy and active. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback already from residents and sports clubs, who are keen to be able to get in and use it for the first time, and I hope they will be as pleased with their new leisure centre as we are.”

Reigate and Banstead Partnershop Manager, David Hughes, added:

“This fantastic new centre benefits from a wide range of the latest fitness and leisure equipment and offers a huge choice of activities, with something to suit every member of the community regardless of age or fitness level. We hope that this flagship facility will help to encourage participation in physical activity and promote a healthy lifestyle.”

Horley Leisure Centre

An important aspect of the centre’s design is the concept of making exercise accessible for everyone. In order to facilitate this, the pool has full length ramped access with waterproof wheelchairs and a poolside hoist for disabled users. There are also four fully equipped disabled changing rooms, two of which are fitted with ceiling-mounted electrical hoists to assist carers. Furthermore, the centre has high visibility signage with captions in Braille, a hearing loop system and tactile paving around the outside of the centre.

The centre has also been designed to be as energy efficient as possible in order to minimise the impact on the environment and reduce running costs. In a first for a GLL operated centre, the biomass heating system will supply 100% of the heating during the summer months and approximately 75% in the winter. A UV system for cleaning and removing the bacteria from the pool will use half the amount of chlorine that a pool of this size would normally require, whilst the pools themselves have thermal covers that reduce water heating costs by 30%.

Community values also played a major part in construction process. Out of the 80 subcontractors used on the project, 26 were local companies that provided work for local people and reduced the impact on the environment from commuting to the site.

Also on board were S& P Architects – who provided technical expertise for the Olympic London 2012 Aquatic Centre – and main contractor Pellikaan Construction Ltd, who has completed over 900 leisure centre projects across Europe.

Gert-Jan Peeters, Pellikaan Construction Ltd, said:

“This has been an interesting project for Pellikaan as we were able to use the sustainable techniques that we have used on previous projects, in England as well as abroad.

“One challenge arose in the early stages of the project and led to the design being changed in liaison with the architect. As a result, the basement was reduced in size by 50% and a mezzanine floor was introduced in its place.

“However, the project has nonetheless progressed very well and it has been a pleasure to work with this team, both with the client and the architects.”

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