College: indoor codes have avenues to address court space issue, say Hastings District, Napier City councils

Hastings District and Napier City councils agree there's a paucity of indoor court space for sport in Hawke's Bay but say they are keeping the ball rolling.

In response to questions emailed to the councils, Hastings deputy mayor Tania Kerr said the council acknowledged court space for all indoor sport was at a "premium right across the region".

Kerr, who also is a Hawke's Bay Sports Council member, said the best conversations the codes could have were with Sport Hawke's Bay, which was tightly involved with all sport and their requirements.

"There are capital projects going ahead at a number of facilities and plans for others that may well alleviate some of their concerns.

"We do commend the efforts of the administrators of both basketball and volleyball; their enthusiasm and efforts are driving strong growth in their sports.

"Efforts such as these that encourage our people to take part in physical activity are greatly appreciated and admired," said Kerr.

Napier mayor Bill Dalton said his council was acutely aware of the need for increased court space and had discussed it at length with the regional sport administrators and conducted workshops.

Dalton said they worked through a plan last year to address present and future needs through the "Multi Use Sports Facility".

"However, the project failed to gain community support due, in part, to the inclusion of a velodrome. Without the velodrome component, we were unlikely to gain external funding so we parked it and are now working closely with PGA and the RISEC [Regional Indoor Sports and Events Centre] Trust to improve the provision of court space here in Napier.

Volley Hawke's Bay operations manager Tony Barnett says dialogue has been open with both Hastings District and Napier City councils but they aren't prepared to budge from the status quo when it comes to allocating venues with consistency.

However, Dalton said the Napier council was following protocol and doing everything it could.

"Saying that we are 'not prepared to budge' is patently untrue.

"Any funding that is allocated to indoor court space needs to go through the LTP [long-term process] due to the change in project scope and we are working on the LTP now," he said.