A decision on stripping some over-60s and disabled people of cut-price access to leisure facilities in the north-east has been deferred until next year.
Sporting chiefs have argued Aberdeen’s discount scheme is “unsustainable” in its current form at a time of badly-squeezed budgets.
But they have been warned by the city council the changes will be blocked unless they produce better evidence of the impact both on finances and users.
The proposals were originally knocked back until December by the local authority’s finance committee for consultation with its disability watchdog.
But now it has emerged they will not be discussed until at least February.
The delay was revealed by Sport Aberdeen’s business development director Jill Franks when she met the Disability Equity Partnership.
She explained the aim was to “target the scheme more closely to those who deserve it the most within constrained financial times.”
And she added: “Inevitably, there are going to be some winners and there are going to be some losers.”
The panel responsible for drawing up the proposals – which includes the council and other bodies – has conceded they are based on “limited research”.
DEP chair Dame Anne Begg said it was “very difficult to make judgments if you don’t have the statistics”.
She called for urgent talks over how many people would lose out and how much money would be saved by the scheme.
Partnership member Ron Holding said it appeared bosses were seeking to target “low hanging fruit” in the search for savings.
Ms Franks responded, despite the lack of available data about current uptake: “We are confident that the conclusions are actually fairly valid”.
She suggested that if everyone who was eligible for discounts paid full price, that could result in an additional £300,000 of income.
Finance committee convenor Willie Young said: “There’s no use cutting just for the sake of it. They need to justify what they are going to do.
“Unless I see a benefit, not just to us as an authority, but to the people that it is affecting, then we will be saying ‘thank you very much for the report, but we do not support it – you will have to go and think again.”
