A much-needed investment will be made to bring the gym at Llanfyllin Sports Centre up to “acceptable standards”.

Freedom Leisure, which took over the running of the centre in 2015, has offered reassurance that the facility will remain open and is in line for improvements.

It comes after fears were expressed by Llanfyllin Town Council that the gym was being “wound down” towards eventual closure.

At the council’s monthly meeting in November, councillors voiced concerns about the state of the gym which they said had broken equipment and even holes in the roof.

Comparisons were made to the substantial investments recently made to the gyms at Newtown, Welshpool and Llanidloes.

Cllr George Stroud said: “When Freedom Leisure took over the estate of leisure centres there was a big promise of investment – and there has been elsewhere.

“The gym is in quite a poor state of repair. All the benches are ripped and machines are out of order.

“It is a public building and they are running a public facility on our behalf as taxpayers.

“In time they are presumably going to be looking at what parts of the estate they are going to get rid of.

“It would be good if they invested across the estate and not just in places that they want to keep open.”

Now it has been confirmed by Gwyn Owen, Freedom Leisure’s area manager for Powys, that Llanfyllin is still very much part of their plans.

He said: “I met and spoke with Glenn Nixon, Llanfyllin Sport Centre operations manager, last Friday and we have discussed actions we can take to bring many of the items within the gym and indeed the fabric of the gym to our acceptable standards.

“Please be assured that we do not have any plans to close Llanfyllin Sports Centre.

“In 2015 we entered into a 10- to 15-year contract with Powys County Council (PCC) to manage 14 of its sport and leisure facilities and this remains our commitment.

“As part of our contract with PCC we have a number of priority bid commitments to fulfil across Powys and this will include reinvestment across sites where we can make a positive impact on leisure provision within Powys communities.”