Council-owned outdoor centre faces £200,000 loss

A council is looking to increase visitors to an outdoor centre it runs after revealing the site is expected to make a loss of more than £200,000.

Derwent Hill, an education and training centre, is located at Portinscale in Cumbria's Lake District but has been owned by Sunderland City Council since it opened in 1962.

Conservative councillor Antony Mullen questioned whether the council was doing anything to address the centre's losses.

Paul Wilson, the council's director of finance, said the local authority was working to increase Derwent Hill's use by third parties, which had fallen since the Covid-19 pandemic.

He added that although the centre carries out outreach work with community schools it still faced competition from similar facilities in the area.

Derwent Hill was one of the first local authority outdoor education centres in England, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Its website states the centre is designed "to provide high quality residential outdoor education for the children and young people of Sunderland, which includes some of the most deprived areas in the country".

But figures from Sunderland City Council's third budget review for 2024-25 showed the authority is projecting a £217,000 loss for the centre for the year.

It added this was caused by a "combination of higher running costs and lower anticipated income".

Speaking at a council meeting, Mullen said the issues surrounding Derwent Hill's finances had been raised for "a couple of years running".

Former long-standing councillor Patricia Smith also spoke to the council about the issue at the last authority-wide meeting of 2023-24.

She asked councillors to make sure they would "take care and look after" Derwent Hill.

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