Leisure bosses have permanently axed the catering service at their three main sport centres in Perth with the loss of 15 jobs.
The redundancies will affect the food outlets at Dewar’s Centre, Bell’s Sports Centre and Perth Leisure Pool.
It comes as Live Active Leisure continues to suffer the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The catering job cuts are the latest blow for the group after it was revealed that Perth Leisure Pool is expected to remain closed until September next year following storm damage costing £500,000.
Andrew Brown, head of contacts and compliance at LAL, confirmed the redundancies to councillors at a scrutiny committee meeting on Wednesday.
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He said: “A key challenge for us is in how soon can business return to normal and until such time as it does we will continue to face difficult business decisions.
“For example, Live Catering, at our three principle sites of Dewars, Bell’s and Perth Leisure Pool struggle to provide positive financial return pre-Covid.
“Given the impact of Covid on our ability to provide sporting and non-sporting events, and the impact on general footfall, we have already made the tough decision to permanently close our Live Catering outlets resulting in the loss of 15 jobs.”
LAL believes that for catering to reopen at the centres in the future it will require a major investment in the overall facilities.
The organisation, which is responsible for sports and fitness complexes across Perth and Kinross, has been forced to use more than £1 million of its reserves during the pandemic.
Fiona Cameron, deputy chief executive officer of LAL, confirmed the organisation currently had “no intention” of reopening the catering outlets.
She said: “One of the challenges we have with the Live Catering is the aging infrastructure of the buildings that we have those catering outlets in.
“They’re not the most efficient and they would require huge investment into making them an efficient operation.
“At the moment the only way we would be able to reintroduce Live Catering back into the facilities would be through future investment into the actual facilities .
“At the moment their is no intention to reverse it (the closure) in the current format that it was previously.”
