Hackney Lido seems set remain the preserve of the (predominantly white) middle classes and bring few to an emerging future generation of swimmers as it has been exempted from the Free Swimming for under 16s scheme on the basis that “it would be too popular with young people”. This allows staffing levels to be kept low.

A Hackney swimmer commented elsewhere that the Lido was, “Just fine for middle-aged, middle-class people in expensive wetsuits who believe that a heated pool without a roof and the great unwashed in their bermudas or bikinis (who after all only paid for the thing with their taxes) is Outdoor Swimming in the raw.”

“It struck me, ploughing up and down in my eccentric, yet effective freestyle, that the lido, patronised almost exclusively by the middle class (it’s easy to tell, even in these so-called classless times, even without clothes) is an excellent advertisement for a range of middle-class virtues commonly thought to have gone out of fashion.”

(CLICK ON -> The lido rage that simmers under the surface | Robert Crampton – Times Online: .)

So what would they do to people who complained about the council’s stewardship of swimming assets. Local author banned from the borough’s libraries for having opinions. ???

“A warning to any innocent Hackney writer: question the coming triumph of the 2012 Olympics and, like me, you could achieve the dubious glamour of becoming a banned author. ???

??? Hackney Libraries invited me to come back in February 2009 to launch a book I had been working on for more years than I care to remember: Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire. I was happy to accept, believing that a work researched, contrived and constructed in this place should have its first reading right here. A small return on my part for 40 years of madness and inspiration, painting the white lines of football pitches on Hackney Marshes or trawling for used books in Kingsland Waste Market.

Then, last Friday night, I had a call to say sorry, but the invitation was withdrawn. It seemed a diktat had come down from above that I was a non-person and should be barred from the library for the crime of writing an off-message piece on the Olympics. This essay, published in the London Review of Books, responded to aspects of the creation of the Olympic Park in the Lower Lea Valley: the destruction of the Manor Garden allotments, the eviction of travellers, and the famous ‘legacy’ revealed as nothing more than a gigantic shopping mall in Stratford.”

(Via Banned in Hackney – for going off-message about the Olympics ¦Books ¦ The Guardian: .)

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“A father has described his anger after he and his son were refused entry to their local swimming pool because they weren’t Muslims.

David Toube and Harry, five, were turned away by staff from the men-only session.

The council has now admitted that workers at Clissold Leisure Centre in Hackney, north London, made a mistake and offered the family an apology.

Mr Toube, 39, a lawyer, said they visited the baths at 9am on Sunday.

‘I arrived at the pool to discover that they were holding what staff described to me as ‘Muslim men-only swimming”,’ he said.”

(Via ‘Non-Muslim’ father banned from London pool – Telegraph: .)

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As the Jewish and Muslim groups have maintained gender-based swimming in the borough’s other pools throughout the four years that Clissold was closed it would be interesting to know whether the people complaining have swum at all in Hackney’s pools in that time [LINK]. The main point that this ‘complaining’ shows up is that with too few pools in a borough the community is divided and condemned to squabble over programming. This Website has long taken a dim view of the ubiquitous 25 metre tank and ‘teaching puddle’ setup but this shows that even two 25 metre tank centres can be too few for a community.

“A Hackney swimming pool which recently re-opened after a four-year closure has been criticised for instigating a segregated swimming policy to accommodate religious Jews and Muslims.

The policy, which means that Clissold Leisure Centre’s training pool is open to women only between 10.45am and 12.30pm every Sunday, was the subject of heated debate at Hackney Council.

Local resident David Toube complained after his wife was not allowed to bring the couple’s five-year-old son into the pool as a result of the policy.

He said: “Why should a public institution subsidise the expression, in a public place, of the gender apartheid practice mandated by a small religious minority?’”

(Via The Jewish Chronicle: .)

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The comments with this article include some absolute gems.

‘This morning, my wife, five year old son and I thought it might be nice to go swimming in the newly re-opened local swimming pool, Clissold Leisure Centre. We got to the pool at 10.30, to be told that:

- the main pool was too deep to be safe for a five year old;

- the ‘training’ pool was women only between 10.45 and 12.30 every Sunday;

I got angry. I nearly swore. I rarely get angry at people who are doing no more than implementing a policy, because it isn’t fair on them. I apologised.

Not to worry, we thought. I’ll go in the main pool. My wife and son will go to the training pool. However, that was not permitted. My son, being of the male gender, was not allowed in a women-only swimming session.

I asked why this policy had been put in place, in a way which prevented families swimming together, at a peak time, on the one day of the week during which both mothers and fathers were likely to be doing family things. What reason was there for barring very little male children from the training pool? Why schedule the single-gender swimming session right in the middle of the morning, so that families which arrived at (say) 10.15 would only have half an hour before they were chucked out? Why not schedule it for early in the morning or late in the evening, or on a week day?

Apparently, the policy had been set by Hackney’s Equal Opportunities officer.
However, there was a paddling pool open at 11 in which he would be allowed to splash around. No use for learning to swim, we discovered when we got there. The pool was absolutely filled with families with toddlers, many of whom had been chucked out of the training pool in order to make way for the women only swimming session. They stood around for 10 minutes, dripping in the corridor, before the paddling pool was finally open.

While in the paddling pool, I met a woman whose husband was a Hackney councillor. She was also rather angry. I suggested that this was a classic example of an equal opportunities officer trying to cater to an illusory problem, and in doing so, simply feeding the xenophobic prejudices peddled by the Daily Mail.

Apparently not, she said. There were fierce battles in Hackney Council over the issue. The main movers for prime time single sex swimming were the Hassidic jews. She was not racist, she stressed: but they had the advantage of being able to run an effective community-based letter-writing campaign, and of organising politically around the issue.’

(Via Harry’s Place Single Sex Swimming, Religious Minorities and Anti-Discrimination: .)

(Via Clissold Leisure Users’ News Single Sex Swimming, Religious Minorities and Anti-Discrimination: .)

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“Four years, countless consultancy fees, umpteen broken promises and many millions of pounds later, Clissold Leisure Centre in Stoke Newington is finally re-opening this weekend.

For those who’ve not followed the saga, here’s the story in brief. In 2000 the Centre opened amidst a brass band’s worth of pomp and publicity, the very model of a modern, major, New Labour endorsed Lottery-funded Millennium project. Come early 2004, the facility was closed, having accumulated a staggering 59 serious defects – everything from warped floors to a leaking roof to a badly thought-out changing ‘village’ that promptly alienated Stokey’s Muslim and Hasidic Jewish communities.

The elegant building seemed doomed, a notion not entirely dismissed by Hackney council’s constant goalpost-shifting when pressed about a possible re-opening. However, on 15 December the Centre will finally be welcoming the public through its doors again.

The building is now in the hands of GLL, who run a number of fitness centres in London and – auspiciously – masterminded the successful renovation of London Fields lido in 2005. Londonist had a tour round the building this week, and we were mightily impressed. The 25m, 8 lane pool is set up for sporting events as well as keeping fit – ideal for those 2012 hopefuls to get some practise in when the Olympic-sized pool at the aforementioned London Fields gets too chilly. The fitness rooms look very modern, with ranks of all-new equipment, and the floor throughout is sprung to give those ankles a rest. Throw in a couple of squash courts, a sports hall with pull out bleachers, a health suite and a cafe, and you realise that there’s enough here to interest even the most un-sporty types. The building’s sleek design is reflected inside, with plenty of natural light filtering through and giving the place an inspirational air. We were also assured that issues surrounding the changing ‘village’ have been addressed.

The membership fee, normally £35, is being waived during December. Whether that’s a feeble apology for the years of closure, or a carrot to entice in locals who scarcely believe that the place will be open, it’s still a bargain. With regular adult membership at £37.50 per month, it’s bound to be popular. We just hope that it stays the course this time round.

Clissold Leisure Centre, 63 Clissold Road, N16 9EX. Opens at 9.00am, Saturday 15th December.

Photo by the author”

(Via Londonist Clissold Leisure Centre To Re-Open: .)

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“From Building:

Hodder soon encountered the sort of problems that go with local government work. ‘In the early days, there was a constant change of personnel at the council,’ he recalls. ‘Tony Ellison, the chief executive, left, the [in-house] project manager changed. There was a tremendous lack of continuity.’

Kim Wright, director of community and leisure at Hackney, admits: ‘It’s no secret. There was no overall political control and it was a fairly chaotic managerial arrangement.’

But the real difficulties started in 1997 when Sport England, one of the scheme’s co-funders, designated Hackney a priority initiative area, which meant, according to Hodder, that there was money available to take the budget to £10m. However, what should have been a boon for the project quickly became a poisoned chalice.

‘That prompted Hackney, not unreasonably, to rethink the brief,’ says Hodder. ‘I felt there were things that we could improve … the size of the gym facility could be bigger, there was no spectators’ facility. There was quite a lot of public consultation that led to changes – for example, to the changing rooms because of the Orthodox Jewish community.’

There was debate, too, over the scheme’s two 25m swimming pools. Some felt that there should be a single 50m Olympic pool – an idea that was dropped – but one of the pools was stretched from six to eight lanes.

These were substantial changes, but Hackney was keen to start work on site as soon as possible, partly because it had been advised that this would save on VAT. However, tenders for the project came in at £13m, £3m higher than anticipated. The design team and the council came up with a compromise budget of £11.5m, but in the meantime Gleeson, the contractor, was being pushed to get started.

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(Via Hackney, Council of Chaos “It’s no secret??? it was a fairly chaotic managerial arrangement.”: .)

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Clissold Leisure Centre, the leisure centre that was only able to remain open for 20 months after construction, is set to open imminently after the expenditure of an estimated further £13,000,000 by Hackney Council. According to swimmers in Hackney this takes the total cost of the centre to well over £50,000,000. The original Clissold Baths, that were on the site, closed in late 1995 or early 1996. Watch the countdown!
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“The Clissold Leisure Centre in Hackney, London, is to reopen next month after nearly four years of remedial work.”

(Via Leisure Opportunities News Clissold Leisure Centre to reopen: .)

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From ‘not the Clissold Leisure Centre‘

“This week’s issue of the Hackney Gazette features the following as a “news” story. News? It all sounds too familiar to us. (Must be a quiet month, we think).

THE final bill for repairs and improvements to the trouble-torn Clissold Leisure Centre is expected to be £13 million. The building work is scheduled to finish next month.

The latest estimate hikes Hackney’s spending on the flagship centre in Stoke Newington to £44 million – four times the original budget.

Hackney Gazette

Regular readers will remember that Clissold Leisure Centre closed nearly 4 years ago to remedy major ‘issues’ with its use after only 22 months of ‘incident-rich’ use. Locals claim that the total bill for the centre including legal and consultants fees topped £50,000,000 quite some time ago but the true costs are shrouded in secrecy and, they say, muddle. The original baths on the site (25m and 100ft pools) closed in 1995.

• This item has comments in the Manila discussion archive.

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