Pool spashes into Planning Committee

Birmingham City Council's planning committee on the 24th September will be considering the Aquatic and Leisure Centre, blogged earlier (Swimming plans for Olympic dream & Olympic Pool to boost City's sporting provision), with a view to getting feedback for continuing negotiations to address issues that councillors feel are relevant and to identify any amendments or any additional information that may be required for the application.

Details from the issues report submitted to the committee on the proposals are shown below.

The proposed development of the Birmingham Aquatics and Leisure centre (BALC) is for a mix of indoor and outdoor sports provision. The building will have a total floor space of 17,019 sqm and will contain:-

Aquatic sports facilities:
10 lane Olympic standard 50m pool
Diving pool for Commonwealth Games (within 50m pool)
Spectator seating (700 permanent, up to 2,500 in event mode)
25m community and teaching pool
Competition events rooms
Leisure pool
Changing facilities

The dry indoor sports facilities will comprise of:
Dry diving facility
Climbing wall
8 court sports hall with 900 seats
Fitness suite
Exercise studios
Sauna/steam and treatment rooms

The ancillary facilities will comprise of:
4 x five-a-side pitches
Outdoor pitch changing
Replacement grass football pitch
Replacement basketball area
Café/bar
Creche
Community
meeting rooms
Police room
Amenity space

The BALC will have opening hours of 06:00 – 22:00, with certain facilities such as the Olympic pool being available for private club use outside of these hours to allow for specific training needs of athletes.

External floodlighting to the pitches will be discussed and agreed with the Local Authority in terms of the height, level of luminescence and light beam angle. In addition to this, external sports pitches will not be used outside the hours of 08:00 until 21:00 daily.

Images from the planning application are reproduced below: