A MULTI-million pound day centre and community pool is a step closer to being developed — with new images of how it could look being released.

Plans to build the £5.7m Jubilee Centre on the former site of Firwood School have now been submitted to Bolton Council.

It will replace the existing Jubilee Centre on Tennyson Street, Halliwell, which was built in 1983 and is now no longer fit for purpose.

The centre delivers services for disabled adults and the new complex in Crompton Way will broaden its reach to include young people who will soon become adults.

The decision to relocate the centre was made after it was realised to rebuild on site would disrupt the day service and access to the pool.

The Bolton News:

(Images of inside the new centre)

Instead the land will be handed over to the department for education for a new school to be built by 2024 to cope with increasing demand for spaces.

Bolton Council invested a further £700,000 into the new centre, which will have a gym, cinema, sensory room and other facilities.

The pool will also be open to the community to use.

In a statement, Bolton Cares said: “We want it to have wow factor.

“The Jubilee Centre is to create a non-institutional, vibrant, light, airy, modern, warm, friendly, varied, technically up to date and acoustically sensitive building with high-value finishes.

“A place that doesn’t look like a day centre has an ambience of calm and purpose.
“It will be a vibrant place for socialising, learning new skills, family respite, have a strong community focus with an overall emphasis on healthy living.”

A design and access statement lodged with Bolton Council this week added: “The overall ambition is to redevelop the site and provide a state-of the-art day centre with hydrotherapy pool for adults with learning and physical disabilities, young people with autism, and young people with disabilities who have left school and are transitioning to adulthood.”

A planning application has now been lodged for the development on Crompton Way.

If permission is granted, work is set to start in September, with a view to opening in September 2022. The project to relocate the centre was first put forward in 2019 and the idea of building on the school on that site was first voiced the same year.