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To bring swimming back to London we need to reverse the trend of pool closures, improve the swimming teaching given to children and investigate the other obstacles that people find prevent them from participating in swimming.

The action London Pools Campaign would like to see is

1. A complete inventory of all the pools/ponds/lidos with public access in London - with an agreement that membership pools are not public access, and that school pools should not be counted according the proportion of time they are actually open to the public.
2. A public and affordable pool within 15 walking distance of all Londoners (i.e. no more than about 0.75 miles away). We estimate that this accords with Sport England's old policy of one pool per 30,000 people, and would result in London having 233 public pools (currently 103 in local authority management, plus a few in independent management, plus access to some school pools).

The gap would be tackled by:

1. Stopping pool closures by funding threatened pools
2. Re-opening pools recently closed
3. Funding more school pools and stopping their closure
4. Bringing back into use old bathing ponds and lidos long closed
5. Bringing in temporary pools

1. Tanks like those used at the Barcelona World Championships could be set up in the parks in summer - each costs about £400,000
2. Using buildings temporarily unused as Market Sports did in the buildings around the Spitalfields development

f. Building new pools

3. An acknowledgment that the current method of funding pools and swimming is not working. Pools are discretionary budgets in Councils and history shows that this is the first budget to be squeezed when local authorities are under pressure. The LCC central role in building and maintaining the lidos was continued by the GLC until its closure. Pools are not safe in the borough's hands.
4. A London-wide strategy for swimming pools - like for transport it makes no sense for individual local authorities to make decisions about major facilities without regard for people who live very near, but just happen to come under a different local authority.
5. Health funding directed to swimming pools since one of the major benefits in swimming is to the health of those participating. (This is another disincentive for local authorities since health outcomes are outside their remit).
6. A detailed investigation into the barriers some Londoners experience in participating in swimming - particularly those from ethnic minorities and those with disabilities - and then policies set up to bring about the changes needed.

view the GLA submission 'online' as a webpage here

download and print the full submission with images here (4.4M)