"...I want this development to be the flagship leisure facility for this borough comprising two full swimming pools, one as a public swimming pool and one for structured lessons and training..."
Mayor Bullock 2004
(Council's brochure "Active, healthy and fun - leisure in Lewisham")
It's now 2006 and this week the Council starts a consultation on the new leisure centre and of course there's only one 25 m pool left in the proposed leisure centre.
This is the odd set of questions that the Council asks us to answer:
Q1: In principle, do you agree that these sites should
be developed for a high density, high quality
mixed use scheme which includes new homes,
new shops and community uses and a new
leisure centre?
Our suggestion for this answer: please tick
no and in the box for the additional comment state that
the proposed leisure centre is not sufficient to accomodate the residents' needs and any housing development should only be planned on land not needed by leisure or education.
Q2: Do you think a mixture of housing including one, two
and three bedrooms and above should be provided on
these sites?
Our suggestion: you can use this question to reinforce the answer to Q1, in any case the answers to this questionnaire will not have any weight when deciding the mix of residential accommodation to build.
Q3: Do you think the new pool should have six or eight
lanes?
Our suggestion: please don't tick any of the boxes but just write on the side that we need two full 25 m pools as part of this development.
Q4: Would you like to see conventional single sex or mixed 'village-style' changing facilities?
This is a meaningless red herring, write whatever you want.
Q5: How do you think we could involve children and young
people in the design of the new pool?
Our suggestion: with these questions it looks like you think that we are all children!
In short the Council wants to build a few blocks of flats and close Ladywell Pool so that they can build even more flats. In exchange they'll build a small pool in the basement of one of the blocks in front of the station and they now ask us all to fill in a questionnaire so that they can then say that we asked for it.
We are now producing an additional set of questions that we'll ask people to fill in and deliver together with the questionnaire as an additional comment so that in their report they are forced to write down at least some of the things that people think of it.
The consultation ends on Wednesday 30th October 2006.
Click here to download the questionnaire but remember to handle it with care.
On Saturday 14th October there will be an open day on this development between 3 pm and 4 pm at the City Mission Church, Vian Street, Lewisham,
SE13 7BJ.
...read more...
