Anytime Fitness wants the empty unit above Slim Chickens at Festival Leisure Park open as a gym 24 hours a day. Basildon decides by 23 October.
Anytime Fitness has applied to open a gym at Festival Leisure Park that would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The unit it wants is the empty first-floor space last used by Sprinkles Gelato, reached from the ground floor between Bella Italia and Slim Chickens.
The application, reference 26/00955/FULL, was validated by Basildon Council on 28 August. The council has set itself a determination deadline of 23 October.
What is proposed
The unit is 657.9 square metres. Nothing about the building changes: no extension, no external alterations, no change to the 1,700 parking spaces across the leisure park. The application is purely about the use and the hours.
From the applicant’s own planning statement and operational management plan:
- Open 24 hours a day, every day, with entry by key fob or a pass on a phone
- Staffed 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday, and 8am to 4pm at weekends
- Four permanent jobs including a manager, plus three self-employed personal trainers
- Over 18s only
- A lobby and cardio area at the front, with free weights, recovery, functional training, changing rooms and staff facilities behind
Outside staffed hours the gym would rely on CCTV in all areas, remote monitoring with audio and visual access, a tailgate detection system that admits one person at a time, an emergency phone, a defibrillator and personal safety alarms for members.
The applicant says roughly 4% of members at its clubs train between 11pm and 6am, and that “there is rarely more than one person in the gym during those hours”.
The planning question
The unit already falls in Use Class E, the same broad class as a gym, so the sticking point is not the use in the abstract. It is a condition attached to the 2014 permission that carved up Unit 8 in the first place.
Condition 4 of permission 14/01184/FULL says the restaurant and children’s play centre uses there “shall not be used for any other purposes without the written consent of the local planning authority”. A 2018 variation added the private gaming centre to the same list. The stated reason for both is “in the interest of the vitality and vibrancy of the town centres within the Borough”.
Under the National Planning Policy Framework a gym counts as a main town centre use, which normally triggers a sequential test: show that no suitable site exists in or on the edge of a town centre first. The applicant’s case is that the unit is an established commercial space that was already accepted as suitable for a main town centre use out of town in 2014, that it is modest in scale, and that re-occupying it would not harm Basildon town centre.
That is the judgement the case officer has to make.
Who is behind it
A separate advertisement application for the same club, reference 26/00971/ABAS, was validated on 4 September. It covers three illuminated signs: a fascia above the club entrance, a second on the higher fascia and an illuminated frame around the door. The submitted elevations show them going up alongside the existing Slim Chickens and Heavenly Desserts fascias, and specify bright violet vinyl on a running man symbol.
That application names the applicant as Aslan Fitness 1 Limited, a company incorporated on 3 December 2024 and registered at Hornchurch under the SIC code for fitness facilities. The planning application itself is made on behalf of Anytime Fitness by the consultancy Nexus Planning.
Festival Leisure Park already has a David Lloyd club. The borough lost a gym earlier this year when Studio 360 in Billericay went into liquidation owing £743,749.
What it means for you
If the application is approved, Basildon gets a gym that is open at 3am, which mainly matters to shift workers. The applicant makes that argument directly, naming NHS staff and emergency service workers as typical overnight users.
If you want a say, the practical points are these:
- Comments go to Basildon Council, not to the applicant. Use the comments tab on the application page.
- The deadline that matters is the decision date, 23 October. The council had not published a separate consultation expiry date when we checked on 9 September, so comments are safest submitted well before then.
- Objections have to be about planning, so noise, parking, hours and effect on the town centre count. Competition between gyms does not.
We list new applications and decisions across the borough on our Basildon planning news page.
Sources
- Basildon Council planning register, application 26/00955/FULL, for the reference, address, proposal, validation date and 23 October determination deadline, read on 9 September 2026.
- Planning statement, Nexus Planning on behalf of Anytime Fitness, August 2026 (PDF) for the unit’s location and history, the staffing, the conditions on the 2014 permission and the sequential test argument.
- Operational management plan (PDF) for the staffed hours, the over-18s policy and the security arrangements.
- Application form (PDF) for the 657.9 square metre floor area, the previous occupier and the parking figures.
- Basildon Council planning register, advertisement application 26/00971/ABAS, and its application form and sign elevations, for the signage and the applicant company.
- Companies House record for Aslan Fitness 1 Limited (16114333).
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