A NEW youth and sports complex, being built at Charlton Leisure Cen-tre, will cost £45,000 more than originally anticipated, a report to Test Valley Borough Council's executive has revealed.

The extra money is needed to pay the increased costs of revised specifications to windows, floors, disabled toilets, deeper soakaways and £11,315 required to excavate and fill ground for tennis courts as the original ground was deemed unsuitable.

The courts' surface will also cost an extra £6,400 because of a change in the specification of the asphalt.

The project, known as The Depot, is expected to open in December at the old Portway nursery site and has been built at a total capital cost of £913,000 - of which £402,000 has come from a lottery grant via Sport England.

Head of leisure, Ian McKie, will tell members at their meeting on Wednesday that work on the complex is now completed. "Despite tender reductions to bring the cost within budget and enable the project to start, the building costs have increased," he said in his report.

But he says the overspend can be met by shifting resources from other leisure projects not now going ahead or as in the case of a healthy living centre in the south of the borough, going ahead in a revised manner.

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