WHO WANTS to be frozen all year? The Tower Hamlets Be Well centres do! The Council has frozen the fees at all its Be Well Centres for the next financial year (2025-26).

Most boroughs have sports and/or leisure centres which they run themselves or which are managed for them by a private company on a contract. Tower Hamets Council runs its sports and leisure centres itself: and one of its first acts was to name the service “Be Well”. This does make the centres sound a bit like a clinic or an extension of your GP surgery, but reality is that they house gyms, run exercise classes and offer other facilities such as swimming pools or saunas.

Statistics show that Tower Hamlets residents suffer high levels of risk factors (such as being overweight, drinking alcohol, smoking) and this leads to high levels of illness known as “long term conditions” (diabetes, heart disease, strokes). The Council is committed to working with the NHS to help residents tackle their risk factors and thus bring down the rates of the long term conditions. The Be Well centres have a large part to play in this and the Council hopes that the frozen fees will encourage residents to find out what’s on offer and take part.

Cllr Mohammed Kamrul Hussain, Cabinet Member for Culture and Recreation welcomed the price freeze, saying, “We are placing the wellbeing of our residents at the centre of our priorities.”

●To take a look at what is going on in Be Well, go to:
Tower Hamlets Be Well

●Read more stories about it:
More stories about sport

●To catch up with the news in East London, go to:
East London News