You are invited to participate in a community planning weekend about the redevelopment of Poplar Baths.

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The scheme is being put together by the Poplar Baths Steering Group, SPLASH, The Environment Trust and Swan Housing Association in partnership with Tower Hamlets Council.

We are bringing together a team of architects, cost consultants, engineers, leisure specialists, planners and project managers to work with local people. Together we’ll put flesh on the outline plan that will see the Baths reopen for community benefit.

Poplar Baths closed for public swimming in 1988, but local residents have campaigned ever since for its reopening. Thanks to the efforts of the Poplar Baths Steering Group, the Council have accepted that any redevelopment of the site must include a swimming pool for public use, together with other elements that will subsidise the swimming facilities and make them permanently sustainable. The Council are willing to consider a development on the site that seeks no payment other than providing the swimming pool.

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“IT IS the only part of the ambitious dream known as Campus Ireland that has become a reality. And the National Aquatic Centre (NAC) had its fleeting moment of glory when it hosted the Special Olympics swimming competition in the summer of 2003. It was finished just in time to meet the deadline for the event, which went off smoothly. But the cracks soon appeared.

The facility, which cost the Irish taxpayer €62m to build, twice the original price tag, is beset by structural and legal difficulties. In January it lost part of its roof, blown off in a freak New Year’s Day storm. Although initially the wind was blamed, it turned out that the fitting of the roof sheeting had been substandard. The pool was out of commission until the end of May while repairs were carried out.”

(Via €20m repairs deepen pool fiasco, Stephen O’Brien, Political Correspondent, – Sunday Times: .)

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