Th, Sep 15, 2005Council confirms plan to down-size pool project
It's official, the council is looking to replace Ladywell Pool with a 25 mt. x 6 lanes pool.A loss of 25% compared to the current pool at Ladywell.
Also the learner pool will be 12% smaller then Ladywell.
We were hoping that the answer given by Lewisham Council's Head of Sport and Active Recreation to Cllr Dave Bodimeade had been a mistake.
So, we asked the Mayor clarifications about the plan with a written question to be answered by yesterday's Council meeting.
The written answer given to us yesterday confirms this intention.
Read the full answer here.
In the supplementary question we put at the meeting, we asked the Mayor to reconsider this down-sizing proposal as that would be insufficient provision for Lewisham.
Cllr Mc Garrigle defended the down-sizing.
According
to her logic the centre of Lewisham can do with a smaller pool as by
the time the new pool will open there will also be the new Downham pool
and a new lane pool at Deptford Wavelenghts.
She also mentioned Forest Hill pools as a reason to downgrade swimming facilities in central Lewisham.
Of course all of those pools existed already.
That was the traditional swimming provision of Lewisham that this Council is destroying bit by bit.
Downham closed in 1995 and it was a 36 mt pool that will now be replaced by a 25 mt. pool
Wavelenghts
was supposed to be a replacement for New Cross pool that used to be a
popular pool with lane swimming rather then a lagoon style pool with
wave machine where it's impossible to swim as Wavelenghts is.
It's the Council's fault if they didn't replace the lane swim pool at the time (Steve Bullock blames the public!).
Forest Hill Pools exists since 1885!
No guarantees on 2010 delivery
The outgoing Mayor had justified the closure of Ladywell saying that there would have been a new "state-of-the-art flagship" replacement in central Lewisham by 2010.
In another question we asked about guarantees for the 2010 date of delivery for this promised new pool in central Lewisham.
The written answer is a masterpiece of emptiness and doesn't mention dates at all.Read it here.
We used the supplementary question to ask if that meant that there's no guarantee of date of delivery.
Again Cllr Mc Garrigle (the outgoing Mayor doesn't even look at us anymore) told us that:
Is that a guarantee?"we have always been working toward 2010"