Community and Children’s Services Committee
WEDNESDAY 28 JANUARY 2026
Watch from 2:50
minutes
The Committee received a presentation from the project architects and delivery partners on the proposed refurbishment of the Golden Lane Leisure Centre, intended to provide Members with an overview of the design options ahead of the Gateway decision in non-public session. The Committee was presented with two primary options: Option 2 (the recommended option), which included an £8.61m refurbishment and wellness proposal replacing the sports hall and studio with an expanded fitness gym, delivering a revenue surplus and stronger strategic alignment, and Option 3, an £8.52m refurbishment-only scheme which retains the sports hall, but modelling suggest would operate at a revenue deficit.
Members raised several questions relating to the impact of the proposals. A Member queried the rationale behind the two primary options being presented and was informed that the options had been developed through detailed site analysis, heritage assessment, stakeholder engagement, and modelling of both operational need and financial performance.
Several Members expressed concern about the potential loss of the multi-use sports hall under Option 2 and emphasised the hall’s value for community and children’s activities. While acknowledging these concerns, officers advised that the hall’s usage was currently limited and that alternative local provision would be explored for displaced users, which included badminton groups. It was further noted that independent specialist modelling indicated that retaining the existing facility mix would result in an ongoing revenue deficit, whereas reconfiguring the space to increase the fitness and studio offer would provide a more sustainable financial model, reducing pressure on City Fund resources, alongside more flexible space.
A Member sought assurance that the design would ensure privacy for women and particular cultural groups using the swimming pool. Officers confirmed that solutions such as integrated blinds and adaptable screening were being incorporated into the design to support women-only and culturally sensitive sessions.
Responding to a query around the provision of dedicated group changing facilities, particularly for school and children’s groups, officers advised that while the pool changing areas would be upgraded, spatial constraints limited the introduction of additional large dry side changing areas. However, it was confirmed that accessibility improvements and limited dry side facilities adjacent to the activity spaces were being considered.
A Member asked whether the refurbishment would impact the pool hall or reduce the size of the swimming pool. In response, officers confirmed that the pool hall was Grade II listed and no changes to the pool’s footprint or heritage fabric were proposed.
Members questioned the reliance on financial modelling that suggested a future surplus under the preferred option. Officers advised that the modelling had been undertaken by the Sports Consultancy, which used industry standard assumptions regarding public sector leisure operation.
A Member raised concerns about future management of the facility and the need for improved operational performance. Officers confirmed that a new operator procurement process was underway and that expectations around performance would be included in the new contract.
In response to questions on consultation, officers confirmed that targeted engagement had taken place with resident groups and existing users and that more extensive consultation would continue as the project progressed.
transcript
2:46 | Simon Cribbens, Assistant Director – Commissioning and Partnerships
We have a paper in the non-public section of gateway 2 to report, options report for a formal decision on the proposed, or preferred option, for the technical design of the refurbishment at Golden Lane Leisure Centre. However, I thought it’d be really helpful to have in public session a presentation from the architects and our partners developing it, so that you can see the design options, they can talk through the process that we’ve undertaken to get to this point, and the logic and the factors that underpin our recommendation around the preferred design. So I’m really delighted I’m joined by Nick Haywood from Faulkner Browns, the architects, who are undertaking that work for us, our partners Alliance Leisure represented by Steve Rose and our partners from Hadron, the specialist project managers, and that’s Sepideh Rashti who’s joined us here today. So we thought we could walk through the presentation. We will certainly be able to take questions. The reason why the gateway is in non-public is it includes some financials that would be pertinent to the contractor cost for the development and the operator cost, so that’s in non-public for that reason. But we want to be as open transparent with our thinking around the options as possible. So I’m going to hand over to Nick who I think is going to share his presentation on the screen.4:21 | Nick Heyward, Senior Associate Architect, Faulkner Browns
Thank you very much for having us and letting us present to you this afternoon. As Simon has just introduced there, we are architects on the Golden Lane Leisure Centre. We’ve just completed a piece of stage 2 reporting work on that, and the few slides that we’ve pulled together now is just a brief synopsis of those works that we’ve been asked to brief to do, and the design options that we’ve been exploring off the back of that briefing. I’m sure many of you in the room are very familiar with the Golden Lane Estate, but for those of you who are not, it sits within the Barbican and Golden Lane Conservation Area. It is right in the heart of the Golden Lane Estate and surrounded by a number of grade two and grade two star listed properties. The estate itself is grade two listed and we are very conscious of that context in which it sits.We’ve done a lot of site analysis looking at the way the building is approached and the condition of the existing building and the works that need to be done around it but also the sensitivities of the context on looking on to that leisure centre. I think what is important within this brief, is it gives us an opportunity to revitalise the leisure centre as it stands at the moment and make it a more of a compelling offer, not only just to the residents of that estate but to the further public beyond as well.
Just a few images of the actual leisure centre itself looking back historically. It was constructed in the 1960s and to be fair it’s changed very little since then, and as I say it’s grade two listed so a lot of the original fabric has been preserved. In 2012 it underwent a significant refurbishment, and it was very successful refurbishment, it added new studios in, it cleaned up the changing area, and was just a refresh of the whole facility. We’ve got on our team a heritage consultant from Alan Baxter Associates and they’ve looked at the existing building as it currently is and analysed the heritage significance of that, and in in those little diagrams you can see off to the right there, they’ve highlighted areas of high significance, medium significance, no significance, and those are really derived by which elements of the building are currently existing with the original structure and original pieces of the fabric which we will as part of this redevelopment look to retain. The medium and no significance are areas where there’s potential because the building has been, over its time, been refurbished or has been developed, so it gives us opportunity potentially to look at those as part of the refurbishment for reconfiguration. So, we’re targeting largely the areas of yellow and green in terms of our proposals.
For those of you who have not been down, this is sort of how the building looks currently. So, externally on the left there, you can see some pictures of the new glazed facades that were put in under the arches. These have got these coloured infill panels in them and then the building itself surrounds the tennis courts as well, which is also part of the proposal, to refurbish those as it’s now over 10 years old. It is now showing signs of sort of wear and tear and I think there’s significant issues really being derived by the M& E systems not really being fit for purpose for a leisure centre of that type. Anybody that’s potentially been in and used the pool hall will know that the condition within that pool environment is not really fit for purpose currently. So we’re targeting not only just the building fabric itself and how the actual internal spaces work, but the full sort of mechanical electrical systems behind that to try and build and create a new leisure centre that is not only for fit for purpose today but for many years to come as well and promote its longevity.
And this is just a set of simple plans here. So the existing centre layout I’ll quickly go through the numbers there. On the top left there’s a fitness suite, so that’s where the gym currently exists, and you enter in on the green area in the middle there in what is the entrance and staff area. To the right of that is the pool change and the pool hall itself which, where the pool hall was part of the original building fabric, it’s not been changed, the facades around were reinstated but to the style of the original building back in 2012. The current changing is a sort of a male and female split but some of the corridor spaces, accessible changing, the actual types of cubicles and things, don’t really meet current Sport England guidance and things like that, so those are things that we will be looking to address in this new design proposal. And then to the south of the pool hall, there’s number six, is a new studio that was added as part of the 2012 works, and a sports hall in the pink there and some associated plant rooms and store rooms next to that.
As part of the brief on the project for stage two, we were asked to look at a number of options for what we could do with the building, and I think our first obvious starting point is just a pure refurbishment of what is there in its existing guise. So really we’ve looked to retain the fitness suites, keep the entrance in the same place, update the changing facilities and provide sort of new finishes and betterment to the pool hall. And we’ve looked at the configuration and the guidance and actually we think there’s probably efficiencies that can be made around those. These plans look quite detailed at the moment, quite diagrammatic with it being at stage two but we wanted to test, we wanted to get into a bit more of a level of detail, so we could really test the realms of the possibility and give ourselves some confidence about what we were delivering. But we feel that we could make, on that refurbishment, an expanded fitness offer and a slightly larger gym which would help them with the revenue. To the south of the pool hall we’ve kept the sports hall and the multi-use hall, because it’s more than just a sports hall, and the studio in its same configuration.
We’ve just illustrated this as this other alternative option which we think we’ve come out with as our preferred alternative to just that refurbishment. I’m not going through all of the options we’ve looked at in stage two, that’s in the actual report, but what this allows us to do is actually add a greater amount of facility and a larger offer into the building within the fabric and the constraints of the existing footprint that we’ve got. What it looks to do is to cellularise that fitness suite on the top left so that we can have a series of flexible studio spaces, so those could either be one room, two rooms, three rooms and we can attract different sort of either fitness or wellness offers that are affiliated with a leisure approach. We can add in things like sauna and steam room, potentially into the pool hall, to enhance the offer of that wet leisure environment.
And here we look to potentially do something further; the multi-use hall, it’s got a badminton court in it but it’s not a compliant badminton court, it hasn’t got the run-off sizes. So, that’s why it’s branded as a multi-use hall rather than a full sports hall as it were. In this option, we were looking at potentially reconfiguring that sports hall as a fitness suite and combining it with the studio on the front to give a larger fitness offer, which would help with the revenue and the ongoing uptake of the.. and maintenance of that leisure facility. So it’s really looking at the footprint and understanding how we can potentially optimise that, not only in terms of its revenue, and as well as providing a bit more back to the public.
So very briefly just to finish on here we’ve done a quick review and a summary of those options and fundamentally the difference between option 1 and option 2C is that both allow for a better sort of entrance and a sort of cafe space when you come in and a sauna, that potential for adding a sauna and steam into the wet area. I think option 2C will allow us to enlarge the sort of gym and fitness area more and it adds an extra two studios into the original building fabric, so it sort of sweats the assets a little bit more than it currently does. Obviously option 2C is mentioned there, it has a loss of the multi-use hall, compared to its current configuration whilst option 1 is just a pure refurbishment, and I think inherently because of that loss of existing asset and existing function there’s a greater planning and listed building risk that we’ve highlighted with that refurbishment. I think the key things, other key things, to bear in mind with that, is both of the options are within the budgets that we’ve got set within the project but the business plan forecast, and we’ve got the sports consultancy as an adviser to the projects at the moment, have identified that just a pure refurbishment and keeping the facility mix as it currently is, will mean that the facility runs at an annual deficit, whilst changing facility mix and adding a greater fitness offer and more studios and things, and trying to make the asset work a bit harder, gives a surplus in terms of its annual revenue. So I think that that analysis has sort of led us more towards a preferred option of 2C to make sure that the building is fit for purpose within its longevity of its life, but we’ve explored all options that are available to us within this stage two.
15:01 | Anne Corbett, Deputy (Cripplegate, Labour))
I’d like to speak very much in favour of option 1 mainly because of the hall facility. I think the loss of the hall would be a big loss to the community; thinking about community groups, thinking about scouts, I’m thinking about children’s groups, children’s sport, also for the schools that use the centre currently, that they have a place to use when it’s raining. I think it’s good to retain a space that is flexible in the possibilities. So that is my reason for opting for, the best option, that keeps the sports hall. Thank you.15:5 | Munsar Ali (Portsoken)
One of the challenges that’s popped up in my ward in terms of access to swimming and we spoke about this quite a bit, was privacy for women and in the swimming part, unless I missed it, what’s happened in some other pools where women go to swim it’s open, the glass area, so there’s that lack of privacy so which means those pools, as great they may be, means that it’s inaccessible or excludes certain demographics. How are we on planning for that please?16:25 | [speaker unidentified]
Can I just ask a little bit about changing facilities. So one of the barriers to school groups and children’s groups using the facility at the moment has been a lack of group changing facilities. Is that something that is catered for in the plan? And can I just ask in option 2C where the hall has been converted into the gym, would you then change in the pool section of the facility and walk outside to get to that? Is that the route? I just can’t make sense of it on the plan.16:59 | [speaker unidentified]
A lot of the slides that we’ve just seen are actually in the pack. They’re on the yellow pages, the confidential pages. And obviously when this comes to sharing this information with our constituents, it does become rather difficult as I can’t share the yellow. [But you can share the option papers. It’s the what you can’t share is the where we’ve got] Wouldn’t it have been helpful to have had it all in white then just for the avoidance. [I think you’re probably right there.] Well, thank you for that. Obviously alternatively if this presentation can be shared with people that would be much appreciated.I do remember seeing in here something about consultation and where are we on consultation because I think the points being made by colleagues are very valid, but I’d really like to hear what the end users, what the broader spectrum of end users decide or feel before I make any decision.
17:57 | Sarah Gillinson (Cripplegate, Labour)
Just a question about 2C building on Anne’s comments. What is the sort of planning assumption around where the existing uses for the sports hall might go in the 2C scenario? How would that be catered for elsewhere?18:18 | Sandra Jenner (Aldersgate, Labour)
Thank you. My question was very similar to Christopher’s, is how does 2C compare with the consultation that’s already taken place for the uses for the future gym, for the leisure centre.18:44 | Nick Heyward, Faulkner Brown
So, the loss of the sports hall, so, first question with regards to advocating option 1 and that loss of sports hall and community use it is something that, and then this will overlap about the consultation as well, is something that we have engaged with stakeholder groups that’s sort of the Residents Association GLERA, the operator and Neighbourhood Forums and amongst others within the stage two. We have identified that there are is another community hall existing within the estate and that we are looking alongside the operators and that status to how those facilities can be combined and used more efficiently and effectively than they currently potentially are. I understand that the option 2C, and I think this is why we’re highlighting it within the report for consideration, that there is that loss of the existing facility of the badminton court and that flexibility of that large space, so we are currently welcoming sort of any comments on that. I don’t know if you want to add to that Simon.20:06 | Simon Cribbens, Assistant Director – Commissioning and Partnerships
So yes just on I mean obviously the designs do have impacts on different users, some providing more opportunity. I think for those who play badminton the loss of badminton court will be obviously distressing. We have three groups who play badminton in the sports hall. We have a booking on Monday between 6:00 and 8 and Wednesday between 6:00 and 8. So you know we have to weigh that against the rest of the operational time in the sports hall and what’s the best use from that. There are other groups who use the sports hall but may be able to use the studio for fitness spaces, so to do taekwondo we think that will be there. Obviously, there are children’s groups that may use the sports hall, but may also use the community centre that’s also on the estate as well. So it’s for members to weigh in the balance increased opportunities for some, losses for some, and there’s no perfect solution. I think from our standpoint, we think the preferred solution is option 2C, but it’s a decision for members. I think we should ask Judith to come in here because although it is a decision for you, there is some context which I think you need to be aware of.21:25 | Judith Finlay, Executive Director Community and Children’s Services
Members will be aware that the two decisions are different in terms of their financial revenue impact and that’s where I would like to invite you just to give thought to making sure that we remain in we set something up that’s likely to continue because it’s a sustainable funding model rather than something that is already creating a pressure on the City Fund. So that’s just a reflection for you to consider as you make your decision.22:00 | Anne Corbett (Cripplegate)
I’m really passionate about the children because the sports facilities for children in the area are woeful. There are fewer facilities for children than for adults particularly children who are experiencing poverty, the most vulnerable groups, particularly SEND groups who find it quite hard to access local facilities. In your consultation did you speak to Prior Western School, Richard Cloudsley school, COLPAI school and Charterhouse School – they’re all schools in the area..22:46 | David Williams (Farringdon Within)
I want to drill into the financials a bit more. Can you explain some of that because I represent the ward joining here and there are in the immediate area a number of commercial gyms that are very high standard. So, there’s the Virgin Gym at the bottom of the road, there’s Nuffield Health more or less right next to this centre and look, I hear what you’re saying about effectively installing a sort of modern hipster commercial gym, that’s the most commercially viable option, big fitness floor, free weights, lean into all of those trends around kind of health and wellness and well-being, but that’s not necessarily the same as delivering community leisure centre.And I think it’s really disappointing to hear that the predictions are that that can’t make a profit and so I want to know to what extent you factored in the huge number of gym memberships in the absolute immediate vicinity to a prediction that a gym floor type model is actually going to make money, because to be frank, they’re probably better offers, certainly, if you want a high-end option, there’ll be better offers than we will ever provide here and how’s that been factored in?
And then secondly, how much work’s been done to look at actually how you could drive revenue into a wider model. So in, you know, you could have a paddle court, you could have some other features of kind of modern trends that are not gym floor activity that would allow children and young people much better access to a facility and allow us to keep these kind of wider, more multi-use spaces in a way that has a really significant civic value. So what work’s been done to actually look at trying to maximize revenue in respect to option 1?
24:27 | Dawn Frampton (Cripplegate)
Just thinking about the sustainable model and Simon’s comments about the badminton court being used three times a week, is it? [badminton court has three regular bookings]. I just want to highlight and remind members about the fact that the centre has been poorly managed by the current contractor and therefore underuse of the multi-sports hall has probably got a lot to do with that.24:59 | Sandra Jenner (Aldersgate, Labour)
I too, I mean I’m very mindful of the fact that what we’ve got before us is one option which we’re told would make a deficit. So we would be voting for something which is going to lose money which I’m sure is what Judith is concerned about, and I mean I think we would all take that very seriously of course. But then there is balanced against that, there’s all the points that Dave just made and have you taken into account income from what’s currently tennis courts if it was made more usable for basketball? I don’t know what other sort of paddle ball, all sorts of sports we could generate income there. I mean, are we really sure that option 1 would run as a deficit because that’s very worrying and difficult for us to vote for?25:58 | Ceri Wilkins, Deputy (Cripplegate)
I’m just conscious that following on from everyone else’s points when we discussed this in our meeting where we were very kindly given the presentation prior because it’s part of our ward, but at the moment we’re constantly getting complaints because the centre is so badly run and I’m just conscious that if we were to vote option 1, obviously I appreciate will make it seems to me to be much more of a community-based centre whereas option 2, I like the idea of smaller studio rooms because then you can do things like spin classes. I don’t know how big a paddle court needs to be, but paddle is obviously, as David said, very trendy at the moment, I don’t know if that can be incorporated at all. But I’m just conscious, we need to do everything we can to make sure that we’re not getting another contractor that comes in, that then actually just lets it get run to the ground again. I don’t know, is there any chance we can go back and kind of try and look at this all again because it sort of seems that we’re in a little bit of a bad situation right now – either you go for option 1 where actually you make no money, you’re at a loss, or you kind of have to go for option 2 because it’s the only way you make a bit of money.27:31 | Sarah Gillinson (Cripplegate)
Just because it builds directly on what Ceri was saying, I was going to ask it in non-public, but I am I completely agree with Ceri the question about to what extent is this sustainable feels critical because 2012 is not that long ago for that previous refurbishment. So I’m really interested in what the assumptions are that you’ve built in about the reinvestment costs that will be required in order for this to be a sustainable asset, not just in revenue terms but actually in terms of capital and how significant is that in your set of assumptions and how confident are we because that feels critical.28:16 | David Williams (Farringdon Within))
Can I just get confirmation that there’s no none of these designs rob space from the pool because so often in London we’re having shrinking pool lengths.28:32 | Simon Cribbens, Assistant Director – Commissioning and Partnerships
Broadly in on the financial issues, just to reiterate I suppose what Judith is saying, if it runs at a surplus then obviously the department will have to fund it. That’s the implications of that. So it was a deficit. Sorry. If it runs at a deficit, you know, if the business modelling of the bidding operator is that it won’t pay for itself, they run it of course, but they say, can you pay us £50,000, £100,000, whatever it would be. So that’s obviously consequential because it’s very common for local authorities to pay an operator, but we would have to find that from budgets and we’re aware that that might be very challenging to achieve. In terms of the revenue predictions that are coming from the centre. We’re not designing a hipster gym just to reassure you that – that’s never language that’s been used in any of our consultations or descriptions.So we’ve used an organisation called Sports Consultancy who look at the footprint and the mix of offer across the designs, and they model that against what they would consider a norm of good management, so this isn’t about how Fusion manage or anyone manages the site, and they use that to predict the revenue gain based on assumptions against size and potential mix of use. And so that’s why on those calculations they look at one design and say if we average that out over 10 years we would predict you would make a deficit, and another one if we average that out over 10 years we would predict you’d make a surplus and in non-public we can look at the precise figures there.
So the flexible options with the fitness suites; the spaces there are to enable a commercial provider to provide range of activities, whether that’s for children and young people or for spin or for specific groups. I think it’s very, very unlikely we will have a paddle tennis court because of the noise and putting a paddle tennis court in the heart of a residential estate, I think would break my inbox on a Monday morning. However, you know, we want to make sure that those tennis courts provide maximum opportunity, and good tennis playing services, which is one of the challenges right now.
I’ll leave it now to Nick. There might be some technical issues. If you could just try to mop up all the questions we had that would be great.
31:07 | Nick Heyward, Faulkner Browns
So I believe the first one was about the privacy, especially within the pool hall environments and trying to maximize the use of those spaces to allow inclusivity for all and it’s something that we’re very familiar with in the leisure centre industry that we design in. Within the detailed designs that we are currently starting to consider is the use of blinds and integration of those subtly within the fabric, and those could be automated so they’re easy to put down or pull up for sensitive user groups. So it’s not just that there might be women only user groups, but there’s also specific ethnic user groups as well that that can’t be seen in any sort of state of undress or anything like that, that use the pool environments. So it’s trying to give that flexibility.The other thing that is probably in a bit more in the detail of the stage two is the changing environment and also the pool surrounds itself, we’re looking at the equipment that we provide in that to make the pool more accessible for all users as well. So that could be those that are elderly, those with mobility impairments as well, so that those users can access the pool. We’ve also consulted with the existing user groups of the pool as well to make sure that their needs are met, so those are the local school groups and also others who have their needs to be met in terms of safe access steps, pool hods and pool hoists, pods and things that aren’t within the current facility itself. So all of those things, we’re not quite at that level of detailed design yet, but they’re definitely in most of our site to make sure that the facility is fit for purpose.
The group change and the route to the sports hall: currently within the existing facility, the way that it operates, is the studio and the sports hall is segregated from the main entrance and the changing. We are constrained by the existing building footprint and the fabric. There is very limited space that we can add new changing within that and maintain the facilities even within this just pure refurbishment option. What we are looking to do within that sports hall or the gym, those options, is to add, make sure that we at least add accessible toilet provision and potentially shower provision adjacent to that sports hall, so that again if there is someone with accessible needs they don’t need to come out of that sports hall all the way through the main entrance back to the wet change area to then come all the way back again. I think it is also important to note, especially with dry sports, that a lot of people also turn up already pre-prepared, pre-dressed for those sports classes and things like that. So there isn’t quite as much need on dry sports for those changing facilities as there is obviously with the wet. So we are a little bit constrained there and yes, there is this sort of go in and get changed in one block and then come out onto the sports hall, but we’re trying to make a betterment of the existing condition within the constraints that we have currently at the moment.
The relocation of the planning assumptions, I think you you’ve talked on that in terms of the relocation of the sports hall, Simon, and where those facilities would potentially go, the badminton for example.
34:48 | Simon Cribbens, Assistant Director – Commissioning and Partnerships
One of the things we would certainly look at is, can we identify and negotiate with other sports hall provision that’s proximate? We know the City University has four very compliant large sports courts in a hall around the corner. The local schools may be amenable to discussion about being able to provide for those groups locally as well. So we will look to that. We don’t want to place that burden on a potential operator because we don’t want to constrain the market delivering for the leisure centre. But for those groups, and badminton is the obvious one, that require a high hall we will certainly see if there is other local alternative for those groups.35:35 | Nick Heyward, Faulkner Brown
I think with regards to, I think Simon’s alluded to it, with the fitness offer and it being a high-end hipster gym or a sort of a Nuffield Health, I don’t think we ever see this gym competing or being of those models. It’s very much I think the uniqueness of this leisure centre is the fact that it’s within Golden Lane and it serves that community, it serves that estate. I think that everybody within that estate feels there is the opportunity for it to serve a wider community to that, and that maybe sort of means that it does serve a different population, a slightly different niche, to those more commercial fitness centres that are adjacent and on its borders and I think that should be celebrated.That’s not something necessarily that I can present to you in a plan, but we are looking and again this now comes on to some of the other points about the sustainable offer and bringing in commercial operator that is a bit more successful. We are aware of the supposed shortcomings of the building management and that we are going to, Alliance are going to, bring in a new commercial operator. I think those discussions are taking in place now in terms of how to operate that building more efficiently and make it also fit for purpose within that area and bring their experience into tailoring the offer to make it unique, to make it a sustainable model for the future. We definitely don’t look to be changing any of the pool space. The pool is listed, it’s of high significance as previously mentioned and we will be retaining that pool hall exactly as is.
37:31 | Simon Cribbens, Assistant Director – Commissioning and Partnerships
Just to clarify in public session that we are undertaking a process to procure a new operator. That’s a process through which commercial operators have the opportunity to bid including the incumbent and we will see what the outcome of that is.38:00 | [speaker unidentified]
Okay. All right. Well, Nick and team, thank you very much for giving us quite a lot of information and I’m sure that when we get to the non-public debate, members will be now much better informed in terms of making the decision– (auto-generated transcript provided by YouTube, with minor abridging, corrections, and tidying up)
