About us

The Friends of Gallagher Park are a voluntary community group, who's purpose is to campaign for the development of public leisure facilities in the Northumberland Town of Bedlington.

Our membership consists of representatives from the local community, local councils, the Police and local businesses.

The history

Many years ago, Bedlington was a thriving and prosperous market town, however the decline of the mining industry, combined with the re-drawing of county and constituency boundaries in the late 1980's, led to a decline in its fortunes.

Over the last 10-15 years however, Bedlington has grown in size dramatically as Wansbeck Council cashed in on the property boom, by selling off large chunks of land for new housing development. However despite raking in millions of pounds from the sale of this land and increased council tax revenues, hardly any money has been re-invested in Bedlington to provide improved facilities for the town's burgeoning population, with other local communities such as Ashington and Newbiggin being the major beneficiaries.

Our aims

Our ultimate aim is to secure the construction of a multi-activity leisure centre for the people of Bedlington, to be built on the site of Gallagher Park - the old pit heap, behind Bedlington Police Station and it looked like we'd taken a major step forward towards securing the Leisure Centre, when Wansbeck Council sold Bedlington Golf Club to it’s members at the start of 2008 for £500,000 and agreed to ring-fence the money towards the cost of the project.

Increasingly however, that promise appears to have been nothing more than a hollow one, as the cash is now under the control of the new unitary authority for Northumberland, who, whilst outwardly appearing to be supportive of our cause, have yet to give any indications of what they plan to do and how much they plan to spend in Bedlington.

Whilst FOGP acknowledges that Bedlington's problems are not of Northumberland County Council's creation, they are now it's responsibility and here are some damning statistics about Bedlington, when compared with other towns under NCC's control.

Bedlington - Population 15,400 - no leisure facilities whatsoever.
Morpeth - Population 16,000 - The Riverside leisure centre with swimming pool, gym and various racket sports courts.
Ponteland - Population 11,000 - Swimming pool and leisure centre, run on behalf of Northumberland Council by Leisure Connections Ltd.
Prudhoe - Population 11,500 - Waterworld multi-activity leisure centre with large leisure pool and wave machine, aqua slide and beach area.
Rothbury - Population of less than 3,000 - Coquetdale Leisure Centre with pool and new fitness centre extension opened in September 2008.
Haltwhistle - Population 3,800 - Full leisure centre with state of the art fitness suite, sports hall, children's soft play area and no less than 3 heated pools.
Hexham - Population 11,200 - Wentworth Leisure Centre refurbished at a cost of £10 million in 2008, including a new 25 metre x 6 lane pool, studio pool, café, fitness centre and Jungle Jacks children's soft play area.

To add insult to injury, the former Wansbeck town of Newbiggin (which has a population of just 7,100) not only has it's own leisure centre, but recently had a £10-11 million makeover of it's harbour and the construction of a new breakwater - home to the controversial 'Couple' statue, all of which begs the question; - if other local towns of a similar size (and in some cases much smaller) can have such fantastic sports and leisure facilities, why can't we?

Based upon the appalling facts stated above, we think it's about time that we stopped trying to justify why Bedlington should have it's own leisure centre and started demanding that the people who control the county's leisure budget should make us their number 1 priority in terms of leisure projects in the region!!

Not only does Bedlington deserves better, but with the Olympics on it's way, a leisure centre for Bedlington has never been more right, and a project such as this would yield economic and social benefits for generations to come, through the creation of local jobs and improved community cohesion.

If you think you can help us to improve the lives of our community in any way, please feel free to submit a request to join.