Suella Braverman visits Horizon

Suella Braverman will be visiting Horizon Waterlooville on Friday, 10th October

Transcript

00:00It's been a fantastic visit and I want to thank Mike and Peter who lead the

00:06team at Waterlooville Leisure Centre run by Horizon. It's a charitable

00:10organisation and the benefits and the service and the outreach for the local

00:16Waterlooville community is immense and incredibly impressive. Interestingly a

00:22third of the population in the Havent district are inactive and a large

00:30proportion of our children here in the Havent district are inactive and that's a

00:36higher that's a level higher than the national average and here at Waterloo

00:43Village Centre they're very cognizant of that demographic factor here. There's a

00:48lot of focus on helping the local communities and for that I really

00:54applaud the team. Well we were delighted to have Sue Ella visit Waterlooville

00:59Leisure Centre firstly to see the great work that Horizon does as a charity

01:05charitable organisation but also to look at options around support as well what

01:10support we could get from what wider government to help support and fund

01:17future activities really. We have an expanding population here if you're local

01:23and our ambition as a charity is to provide fantastic accessible facilities as

01:32good as anywhere on the south coast of England and what we've got at the moment

01:37is good but we're going to take that from good to being great so that's the

01:41journey we're on at the moment. So as a charitable trust we have certain

01:47objectives to engage less engaged groups and part of that is funded programs

01:56specifically to target inactive and also those that are more disadvantaged when it

02:01comes to physical activity so we have a lot of health programs we have offers for

02:07people from low income and with more funding we'd be able to do a lot more of

02:11that and reach wider audiences. And that's what sets us apart. We are leisure

02:19centres but what we've got on offer is a whole range of other stuff that other

02:25centres will not be able to offer. An example would be the creche which is part of the

02:30membership which for young parents to be able to drop their children off for an

02:36hour and a half, go for a swim, go to the gym and then have a coffee with their

02:40friends and then pick up their small children afterwards. That is gold dust

02:44frankly and that's the sort of thing we want to do and we will continue to do it.