Crucial 'game changer' classes launched in Harrogate to help thousands live longer and healthier

Leisure facilities across Harrogate, Knaresborough, Pateley Bridge and Ripon which were run by Brimhams Active, have this week moved under the banner of North Yorkshire Council’s new ACTIVE NORTH YORKSHIRE service which aims to improve health and wellbeing across the county.

North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for leisure, Coun Simon Myers, said: “Our new Active North Yorkshire service is aimed at supporting our communities to be active and helping to improve people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.

“We are very lucky in Harrogate – the rehabilitation service we have there is first class and I hope it can be rolled out across the county."

The centre in question, Harrogate’s Fairfax Wellbeing Hub, is being held up as an approach which should be adopted by all ACTIVE NORTH YORKSHIRE centres.

In particular, Fairfax’s specialist rehabilitation exercise classes, which cover care for people who have suffered a stroke, a cardiac arrest, cancer or have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, are being welcomed by local residents as “life changing”.

The classes are led by Emma Spalding, BA Hons, a cardiac rehab instructor and committee member of the British Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation Exercise Instructor Network

She said Harrogate was now being held up as an exemplar of best practice for the work the centres do in North Yorkshire.

For one of her class members, 70-year-old Neil from Knaresborough, it has been life-changing.

He suffered a heart attack in August last year and found himself referred to the Fairfax team where Emma Spalding and the team have helped guide him back to health.

“When I had my heart attack, I felt vulnerable for the first time in my life but the cardiac rehab team was the best support I could have had,” said Neil who is now not only 1.5 stones lighter but is fitter than he has been in a long time.

"From playing golf a couple of times a week, I am now also doing circuit training, pilates and swimming every week.

"I think about my heart attack every day, it came out of the blue, but I now feel very positive thanks to the care I got from both the NHS and the rehab team.”

Leisure centres across the county had been managed by five different operators in the former district council areas but, under North Yorkshire Council, they are being brought under ACTIVE NORTH YORKSHIRE as active wellbeing hubs.

The four leisure and wellness centres in Harrogate, Knaresborough, Ripon and Nidderdale, the three wellbeing hubs at Fairfax, Stockwell and Jennyfield Styan, Harrogate’s Turkish Baths, Starbeck Baths and the Little Explorers Day Nursery in Harrogate are now under the service.

The Selby and Tadcaster leisure centres were brought under the new brand in September, with changes for the Richmondshire Leisure Trust coming into play in the spring of next year and the centres in the former Ryedale and Scarborough areas moving in summer 2027.

Customers using centres in the former Craven and Hambleton district council areas will see the changes start as staff begin to wear the new ACTIVE NORTH YORKSHIRE uniforms.