More than £100,000 is to be spent modernising a "poor quality" leisure centre in Oxford.

Temple Cowley Pools, in Temple Road, lost £533,000 in the past financial year and Oxford City Council, which owns the centre, has had to increase its subsidy per user each year.

The investment, approved by the council's Cowley area committee, will be spent to improve the gym — which has seen the number of visits fall by 8,000 in the last four years to 24,000.

Bob Timbs, the council's executive board member for leisure, said: "The gym itself is one of the worst gyms I have ever walked into.

"What we're going to do is put in all brand new equipment of the latest spec and we're going to do a bit of modernising, because we want it to feel classy."

He admitted the centre was struggling, but said spending more money on facilities was the right decision and doing nothing was not an option.

He said: "Temple Cowley has got to carry on for now so we have got to make it as viable as possible, to get people in there."

In a report to the committee, the gym was described as "poor quality" and the site in "poor condition" with an estimated maintenance backlog for the next four years of £2.5m. The long-term future of the pool is undecided, with the centre likely to be demolished at some stage, to make way for a new leisure centre on a new site.

But Mr Timbs said: "If in the future we did relocate the pool to another area of Oxford, we would own the new equipment and we could move it to another site.

"It's costing us too much money to keep refurbishing it every year."

Work is likely to start at the centre, which will be rechristened Temple Cowley Pools and Fitness Centre, in December, with the new-look gym open at the start of 2009.

Regular gym user Sara Thornton, who lives in Bicester but works at Unipart in Cowley, said: "It's a bit run down, to say the least, and it's not very well kept.

"I think it's a good investment, because there aren't many places like it and it would be a real shame if they didn't do something with it."