Manifesto

LONDON POOLS CAMPAIGN MANIFESTO

Bringing swimming back to London

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 swimming access in London agreeing that:

  1. membership pools are not public access
  2. school pools should be counted according the proportion of time open to the public
  3. it is explicitly stated what size of pool is being counted (small training pools should not count)
  4. general features are listed – opening times, accessibility, any restrictions
  5. special features are listed; eg if has diving, depth for synchronised swimming/canoeing etc

2. A public and affordable pool within 15 minutes 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 (more than twice as many as now). 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
  6. Building new pools

3. A general agreement that London needs more pools, that this can only happen through some public funding and an acceptance that the current system is not working. Pools are discretionary in council budgets and history shows that anything discretionary is the first section of budget squeezed when local authorities are under pressure. Because of this, pools are not safe in the borough council's hands.

4. The setting up of a London Pools Trust to provide a regional strategy for swimming pools - like for that 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 to be directed to swimming pools. One of the major benefits of swimming is all round exercise and the promotion of the health of those participating. This applies especially with children, elderly people and those with disabilities. Therefore we ask government agencies responsible for health, sport and leisure to work together to help us bring more pools to London.

6. A detailed investigation into the barriers many Londoners experience in participating in swimming. This would look at disincentives experienced by people from ethnic minorities, the elderly and those with disabilities, and examine the barriers we know exist like prices, lack of creche facilities, opening hours and the squeezing of children's swimming into inappropriate times. From these investigations we look for new policies to be set up centrally to bring about the changes needed.

7. Finally and no less important than the other points a detailed investigation of the economics of swimming pools particularly looking into 'smart' green ideas of how to keep down the costs. We would like to see developed a sustainable economic model of how to build and run a pool or lido along such lines.

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Copyright 2008 London Pools Campaign