COUNCILLORS are still waiting for answers over the future of the Bar End depot site as plans for the city's new leisure centre progress.

Members of the public got a brief glimpse of how the new Winchester Sports and Leisure Park could look at a meeting of the city council's leisure sub-committee on Monday evening.

Councillors Lisa Griffiths, portfolio holder for health and wellbeing, and Guy Ashton, portfolio holder for finance, outlined how the leisure centre and its surrounding facilities would interact with the city through a network of cycle routes and paths.

They also presented design framework for the area, which includes the landmark depot site, but some councillors were left asking for more.

Opposition councillors Brian Laming, Malcolm Prince (Liberal Democrats) and Kim Gottlieb (Conservative) criticised the lack of information about the depot, with Cllr Laming saying: "The depot site should have been included in the leisure centre. It's about making sure the leisure centre creates a regeneration of that area.

"Infrastructure doesn't take into account the depot site. It's really quite mad."

Former Labour parliamentary candidate Patrick Davies, who was at the meeting, added: "As someone who has repeatedly asked the council why it has excluded the depot site from this exercise, I'm annoyed it isn't in the overall site strategy."

One of the ideas for the site heard through resident feedback was to create a convenience store. Cllr Laming said: "I think a convenience store would help residents. There is a company that is interested in buying a bit of the site, also."

Defending the handling of the scheme, Cllr Ashton said principals for the depot had been set out in the design framework. They included uses that would be not generate much traffic and would have a low parking requirement. The convenience store was being taken on board by the council.

Cllr Ashton added that there had been no deals yet for the depot site and that the council had received more than 1,000 responses across 14 consultation events.

As previously reported, Winchester City Council's cabinet last year approved the mix of facility for the proposed leisure centre, which will be based at Bar End and replace the outdated River Park Leisure Centre.

It will include an eight-court sports hall, a 50m swimming pool that can be separated into two smaller pools, a learner pool and a water play area.

The new centre will also have a ‘clip and climb’ facility, four squash courts, a hydrotherapy suite and eight treatment rooms, two large studios, a spin studio and 200-station gym.

A number of councillors and campaigners have slammed the decision to build an eight-court sports hall, rather than a 12-court hall.

The cost of the project is estimated to be £38million, up from £29m in 2015, with this week's meeting hearing further details about the projects funding partners which include Winchester University.

The university will be investing £6 million in the project, with £1.1m coming from charity The Pinder Trust, and £1m allocated by Hampshire County Council.

The scheme will now go before the city council's overview and scrutiny committee in mid May, before a planning application is submitted in May/June. The design framework will then go before cabinet for approval on June 6.