Oakham Fitness Centre and Oakham Town Council Proposed Eviction

For some time now Oakham Town Council has had a confidential matter on its agenda relating to the
fitness centre.

Like the Tennis Club and The Bowls Club the previous good Councillors let these properties to their
chums well below market value.

Now the current council has to deal with the mess.

The Fitness Centre in Princess Avenue is leased to a man who now resides in Melton and he sublets or has given away public property to the current operators.

He some times pays the  rent, it has not been uncommon for him to be six months in arrears and for the council not to take action.

The rent is below £2,000 a year, a recent market valuation found it should be £9,000 +

The Clerk said it was not very Christian to take action against the fitness centre.

The lease is due for renewal and the Clerk instructed a Solicitor to renew the lease if the tenant wanted to
renew it. He failed to tell the solicitor the current tenant had no agreement with the council, at first he said this was not an issue, we lost a Solicitor because of his comments and then moved onto a new one. I wrote
to the new Solicitor and told them about the sub tenant. Who has taken the view it does matter and has used the words trespass in communications.

The official lease holder has told the council he does not want to renew the lease.

There was a point when the council were discussing moving their offices to the Princess Road site. 
This was also carried out in secret, hundreds of pounds was spent on surveys and reports. The
council concluded the building was not suitable and it would be to costly to rectify. So in the mean time they will stay in Victoria Hall paying a high rent and the Clerk will have to suffer the noise from upstairs much longer than he thought. They are still looking for an alternative location. Rutland County Council offered premises to close to them, this was to expensive and some Councillors felt it would be wrong if the Town Council was associated with Rutland County Council. I am not sure why because they both have similar bad traits.

The Council is now planning to evict the current fitness centre operator if they don't leave early next year.