How Tonbridge Plans to Pay for the New Angel Centre Without Borrowing a Penny

Councillors already approved planning permission for Tonbridge's new Angel Centre back in July, and archaeological surveys got under way at the site earlier this month. Now, a report published ahead of Tuesday 20 October's Full Council vote - the meeting that actually decides whether construction goes ahead - sets out how the council plans to pay for it. The headline: no borrowing required.

When the project was first costed, the whole scheme was expected to come to about £23 million. That figure has since fallen to a project budget of £20.618 million, and the council expects the final cost to land around £20.5 million once a planned change - removing a costly "living wall" feature from the building's design - is confirmed. The living wall would have cost £157,000 to install and £7,000-£8,000 a year to maintain.

Rather than borrowing through the Public Works Loans Board - the usual route for council capital projects, and one that would have meant paying interest of between 5.53% and 6.84% - officers say they've found enough from the council's own reserves and budgets to cover the whole cost: £14.4 million already set aside in the Tonbridge Town Centre Reserve, £1 million from the Tonbridge and Malling Leisure Trust, and £1.1 million from the council's Revenue Reserve for Capital Schemes, making £16.5 million available right now. A further £3.5 million, already approved in February's Medium Term Financial Strategy for the 2027/28 budget, brings that to £20 million - with the final £0.5 million coming from investment income and a top-up to the Town Centre Reserve in the same budget.There's a catch, though: this no-borrowing plan is based on construction starting this November. The council's own report warns that if the vote is delayed beyond Tuesday's meeting, rising costs would mean finding additional funding on top of what's outlined here.

The report also explains why patching up the current, 45-year-old Angel Centre was ruled out. A full refurbishment was estimated at up to £14.58 million in 2023 prices - but switching to it now would mean redoing 12-18 months of design and survey work from scratch, pushing refurbishment itself to around £17 million by the time it could start in 2028. On top of that, the £1.859 million the council has already spent on design and surveys for the new building would be written off as a sunk cost, taking the real total to around £18.9 million. A refurbishment would also mean closing some or all of the current centre for months, risking redundancies among its roughly 70 staff and a long-term loss of members to rival gyms and leisure centres - without fixing the building's underlying problems with layout, accessibility or energy efficiency.

Full Council is being asked to approve entering a Development Management Agreement with Alliance Leisure, the council's development partner, to progress the project to RIBA Stage 5 - construction, completion and handover. Planning permission, the building's final design and the choice of main contractor (Etec) are already settled; Tuesday's vote is about committing to build it. Two related items - the future fee the council pays the Leisure Trust to run the site, and updates to its management agreement - are being considered at the same meeting, but in a closed session, since they involve the Trust's commercial finances.

Source: Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, Full Council agenda, 20 October 2026