Dear York Hall User Group Member,

a meeting was held to update users on progress and plans for the
refurbishment of York Hall Tuesday, 22-3-05. Members of the GLL and
Tower Hamlets project team, councillor John Griffiths and
approximately 20 users were present.

Here is a summary of the presentation and Q& A session.

Please forward this email to anyone you know who maybe interested in
joining the York Hall Users group.

Go to http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yorkhall/ to sign up or log
in.

Let us all hear what you think about how the refurbishment is going.
Replying to this message will reach all 90+ members of the group.

Best Regards,

Mark Mitchell, Yahoo YorkHall User Group Moderator –
mark_yorkhall@...

York Hall User Group Meeting 22-03-05

1. Presentation

Colin McBride, York Hall Project Manager (Martin Associates), gave a
presentation on how the individual projects that make up the
refurbishment programme were running. Colin will be able to make the
presentation available to be downloaded from the User group site .

Key points were :-

• Work on making the building secure has almost completed.
• The hall to the main hall will be used as the entrance to
all the sports facilities.
• Lifts will be installed to improve access for everyone to
all levels.
• It was noted that good progress had been made on the 1st
phase of the new gym.
• Dry change will be on the 2nd floor.
• Plans for the Turkish bath refurbishment have been delayed
and will not meet the 30-9-05 delivery date.

2. Q&A

A 1 hour Q&A session covered the following points (I've grouped them
by subject) :-

General - Project Financing & Low Meeting Turnout

Issue : Are the projects financed? Is the Money committed?

Response : GLL confirmed that the refurbishment projects are funded
with a committed budget of GBP 4M - split equally between Tower
Hamlets & GLL.

Issue : Meeting Turnout. The poor turnout of users needs to be
improved. Very few, badly placed signs up. No mention on GLL
website.

Response : Will try to improve publicity for next meeting. Will look
at using GLL website. Will work with User Group website,
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Yorkhall/

Gym - Suspended Courses

Issue : Courses at York Hall have been suspended during the work.
The hall in which the meeting was being held was briefly used for
classes but these had been suspended on health and safety grounds. A
user asked how come the meeting was being held the hall the while
the classes could not?
Response : The use of other spaces within the building could be
considered – e.g. the area below the main entrance hall. GLL pointed
out that gym facilities are set to improve drastically over the next
few months.

Laundry - A fraction of the machines working, no plans for the future

Issue : Little or no information is available on what plans there
are for the Laundry and only a fraction of the machines work. Users
present knew nothing about the survey despite being regular users.
Response : The council is surveying present use of the facility. An
agreement with the users present will be made to ensure their views
are recorded and feed into the decision making process.

Pool - Improve the woman's changing room privacy

Issue : Privacy for the woman's changing area needs to be improved.
The changing area is visible from outside. Walls need to be extended
and doors added to ensure adequate screening of the changing area.
Response : Users views will be taken into account.

Turkish Baths - More Information needed. Ensuring basic facilities
and hygiene are improved

Issue : Users do not understand what is being planned, how they can
contribute to the process and when work will commence/end.
Response : To date discussions with the User group have been
conceptual rather than practical since no budget had been allocated.
Consultation will now start with the user group on how the
facilities should be refurbished. In order to clarify how things
will work a "road map" explaining how the work will proceed will be
issued. The activities that concern users e.g. consultation phase
dates, target proposal document publishing date, proposal sign off
date, planning phase dates, execution phase - including the dates of
the partial/complete closure of facilities) will be published by
22/4/05. Colin McBride will own communicating plans and keeping the
users updated. The User group web site will be used as a channel to
communicate with users.

Issue : Basic facilities are significantly below acceptable standards
• Of the 3 hot showers : 1 works. 1 has been dry for weeks. 1
has had water but no temperature control for months - sometimes too
hot, sometimes too cold.
• The sauna has been out of action for months. It was noted
that in the whole of Tower Hamlets leisure centres there is only 1
sauna working !
• Dirty water has leaks from the floor above and has poured
down unexpectedly on users on several occasions.
• Broken tiles in the wet area have led to users slipping and
injuring themselves.
• Rats have been seen in the wet area.

Response : GLL accepts that maintenance needs to be carried out
especially since the original dates will now not be met. They will
work towards fixing items on a prioritised list as provided by the
User group. The rats have emerged following work on the drains -
something will be done about them. Adrian Ballington, Project
Manager GLL, will own resolving on going maintenance issues.

3. Next Meeting

The group agreed to meet quarterly for the duration of the
refurbishment project. The next meeting will be in 3 months at a
date to be arranged in late June.