NEWS: Oasis Leisure Centre development leaves Swindon’s future in doubt

Plans to regenerate the area around Swindon Cycle Speedway’s track has put the future of the club on uncertain ground, after members of the club visited the Oasis Leisure Centre to view the revised plans to redevelop the area, which includes a 9,000 capacity indoor arena, indoor ski slope and retail and restaurants.

The indoor arena is now due to be situated right where the current track lies. Initially, the club was informed that they may have been left to their own devices as they were in the corner and on contaminated land. However, the revised plans seem to indicate something entirely different.

Although “Cycle track” appears on the development website, no Cycle Speedway track could be visually seen in the plans. Swindon’s Rob Hunt asked two developers and got inconsistent responses. Rob commented, “One person said there was an area of green where they may put us, which if it was the case, why wasn’t there an oval there? The second said that we may be put by the new skate park. May I add this skate park is underground, so unless we are getting the first ever indoor stadium I very much doubt we are in there minds at all.”

Rob continued, “I appreciate these are subject to planning, but I was informed that some work may be started where we are as early as spring 2016. I did ask, if we weren’t in their plans, could we be relocated, to which the response was different depending on who I asked.”

The Swindon club are doing updates to their track to show they are very much still a functioning club and will not go down without a fight. Last year the Robins did some great work within the community, running successful nights after teaming up with local Scouts. We certainly hope that plans to safeguard the future of Swindon CSC are put in place, sooner rather than later.