Perth groups team up in campaign to save city's Bell's Sports Centre (2025)

Leisure services moved out last year and councillors are to decide on the landmark building's future in the coming months.

Perthshire sports groups have set up a fundraiser in a bid to save Perth’s iconic Bell’s Sports Centre as a multi-use indoor sports facility and restore it to its former glory.

Last spring PKC agreed to move leisure services from Bell’s to the Dewars Centre and schools following around £2m of flood damage the previous autumn when floodgates on the North Inch were not closed in time.

Bell’s is currently shut, but one option put forward in a PKC survey is removing the skirting around the dome and making it an unheated sports space.

Survey feedback is to be included in a paper to go before councillors in the coming months for a decision on the building’s future, which was B-listed by Historic Environment Scotland last year.

PKC leader Grant Laing told councillors last spring that representatives across the chamber were sad about moving the Live Active Leisure (LAL) services from Bell’s, but it was “a financial and weatherological necessity”.

Sports club group Perth and Kinross Community Sports Network (PKCSN) - made up of 12 sports and 3500 members – has now set up a Go Fund Me page to raise money to assess keeping Bell’s open as a heated indoor sports facility catering for a range of sports.

And a ‘Reopen Bell’s’ Change.org petition, calling for it to be reopened as a multi-use indoor sports venue, is currently backed by 3350 signatures.

The PKCSN page urged: “We are trying to ensure that the iconic Bell’s Sports Centre in Perth is refurbished and restored to its former glory as a major sports and leisure facility for the residents of Perth, and the whole of Scotland.

“In order to persuade the council to change its mind, we need to hire a qualified architect, to carry out a detailed survey of Bell’s, and produce for us a comprehensive report on the costs of, not only returning Bell’s to its original status, before the flood, but also to improve several aspects of the building.

“Improved insulation, and the installation of solar panels, will reduce the cost of heating, and reduce the carbon footprint.

“An innovative heating system will reduce heating costs considerably.

“However, as we are not a company or registered charity, we are unable to apply for funding to carry out this essential work.

“The availability of local, high-quality sports and leisure facilities plays an important part in the physical and mental wellbeing of all of us.

“So, please be good enough to donate whatever you can, to help us keep the much-loved Bell’s Sports Centre in Perth open, and help to return it to its rightful place, at the heart of sporting activity in Perth and beyond.”

Last November the PA reported that almost all of the sports clubs displaced by the closure of Bell’s had now found a new home.

Arm’s-length PKC external organisation LAL chief executive, Paul Cromwell, had told councillors the “prompt” delivery of a sports hall within the long-awaited £61m PH2O leisure centre on the city’s Thimblerow car park is “critical to meet future demand”.

Heritage body Perth Civic Trust recently accused PKC of “lacking vision” over city sports facilities.

PCT secretary Ian Cameron said the decision to build PH2O on the Thimblerow car park was unpopular and that unresolved issues at Bell’s and Dewars left the vision for PH2O “rather blurred.”

A PKC spokesperson said this week: “We recognise the value of sport and recreation for people’s general wellbeing, and in regards to that, a public consultation was recently held on the future use of Bell’s Sports Centre.

“Almost 2000 people responded to tell us their views.

“All of the feedback and comments we received from the consultation is currently being analysed by council officers, and a report will go to councillors in the coming months for a decision to be made on the future use of Bell’s.”