GRAHAM has moved the £16.4m Ballycastle Leisure Centre into its internal fit-out phase after 18 months on site, a milestone that clearly shows the Co Down contractor's public sector leisure pipeline continuing to convert into on-the-ground delivery on schedule.

GRAHAM, headquartered in Hillsborough, County Down, is a privately owned construction, civil engineering and asset management group operating across the UK and Ireland.

Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, the project client, is jointly funding the scheme with the UK Government, which has committed £8.1m (€9.5m) through its Levelling Up Fund toward the roughly £16.4m (€19.2m) total cost.

Mechanical and electrical installations, internal partitions and flooring are now under way inside the building, while an inclusive playpark, car park and pump track progress outside; the completed centre will include a 25m four-lane swimming pool, gym, studio, health suite, splash area and bouldering wall, built to a net zero operational standard with solar panels and heat pumps.

The scheme is valued at £16.4m (€19.2m) in total, including £8.1m (€9.5m) of UK Government Levelling Up funding, with completion due in April 2027.

Grant-funded leisure infrastructure like this is becoming a steady, if modest, revenue line for contractors working in Northern Ireland's smaller towns, distinct from the housing and commercial cycles that dominate larger urban markets.

The scheme was unlocked by an £8.1m Levelling Up Fund award in January 2023, when Ballycastle was described in the funding application as having been starved of investment for decades, with its only indoor leisure provision a converted school building with no swimming pool.

The leisure centre also sits within a wider £25m programme of six strategic investments the council is delivering across Ballycastle and the Glens of Antrim, including a shared education sports campus, an innovation centre, an environmental improvement scheme, a pier project and a museum.

For the sector, coordinated town investment programmes like this one point to a repeatable model: contractors positioned for UK capital grant schemes in smaller Northern Ireland towns can expect a pipeline of net zero-standard public buildings bundled together, rather than isolated, one-off contracts.

Source: Belfast News Letter / Irish Construction News