Harrow Council has become the latest local authority to shelve leisure development plans due to concerns over funding.

Plans for a new £37.2m Harrow Leisure Centre and skate park have been scrapped thanks to tumbling housing prices and the looming recession.

Harrow Council are being forced to rethink its strategy to improve the area's sports and leisure facilities after the value of land, due to be sold to fund the new development, dropped so low that its sale would not cover construction costs.

The facility was set to replace an existing sports complex near Byron Park in Wealdstone, which was becoming dated and increasingly expensive to maintain and operate

The project, designed by architects at Kier Group in partnership with Saunders Architects, was to include an eight-court sports hall, four squash courts, two multi-use studios, a 25m, eight-lane swimming pool with spectators' area, a 20m learner pool and a gym.

The centre was set to be one of the most enviromentally-friendly facilities in the country and would have reclaimed 800 cubic metres of rainwater per year from the roof, enough to fill the 25m swimming pool twice over. Other green features included the ability to harness outgoing warm air from the swimming pool, which would have reduced the cost of heating the building by 75 per cent.

The council had also planned to ventilate the sports hall using natural air gathered from ‘wind catchers’ on the roof, while solar panels and 30 vacuum tubes – which pre-heat cold water using the sun – would be used to provide 20 per cent of the centre’s hot water consumption.