Report of Ladywell Campaign meeting July 23rd
NOTES FROM LADYWELL POOLS CAMPAIGN MEETING
LLC = Ladywell Leisure Centre
INTRODUCTION
60 people attended the first meeting of the Ladywell Pool Campaign at
Ladywell Leisure Centre, on Friday 23 July from 7 to 9pm. These notes are
based on ideas and comments put forward at the meeting. The next meeting
will be on Thursday 5 August also at 7pm at Ladywell Leisure Centre and will
need to form working groups to take forwards particular projects to make up
for the consultation gap – the consultation that Lewisham Council should
have done before taking their decision to close LLC three years earlier than
planned, and at least three years before any replacement can be expected.
PRINCIPLES AND OBJECTIVE
This campaign must be public, open, and inclusive to avoid several traps
that the council could otherwise use against it.
The objective is to get the council to guarantee continuous provision of the
facilities provided at LLC – and in particular, the swimming pools – until
and unless a comparable replacement is built and ready to open in the
Lewisham town centre area. In simple terms, to keep Ladywell open at least
until 2010. LLC, at 40 years old, is not a modern facility and could make
better provision e.g. for aquarobics, diving, and other water-based
activities, and indeed for competitive swimming (which now requires pools to
be either 25m or 50m long, or preferably both). However, until something
better is actually provided, we can’t do without it.
The council is likely to claim that the campaign is a front for something
else. In fact, the campaign unites everyone from the Socialist Party and
Respect to the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives; this is a great strength
and must be maintained.
We must make common cause with other campaigns, especially in the education
area, to ensure we cannot be set up as “opposing a new school”. The fact is,
we all acknowledge that a new school is needed: the only issue is where that
new school should be and the council’s incompetence in failing to identify
and secure a more appropriate site which won’t wreck their own leisure
strategy.
The council is highly organised, and so we need to be organised too.
As part of the London Pools Campaign, which highlights the wider crisis in
swimming pool provision across London, we are and can be.
PETITIONING AND BUILDING THE CAMPAIGN
Petitioning – at the LLC, in the town centre, and anywhere else where
signatures can be obtained - is an excellent way to get people involved, and
identify people who want to help and join the campaign. It needs organising,
e.g. with rotas to cover at least some of the LLC opening hours and make
sure volunteers’ time is well used.
We need to use the process to spread information and also to collect
information about supporters who have skills or contacts they are able and
willing to use to grow the campaign. ALL networks can be used in this way:
local neighbourhood ones, churches, union branches, parent teacher
associations – it isn’t just about people with relevant professional skills
and positions of authority.
MOBILISING THE EDUCATION SECTOR
Many local primary schools are failing to meet their National Curriculum
requirements to offer pupils a chance to learn to swim, let alone meet
targets which say they should actually be able to do so. This is a safety
issue, e.g. it means that these children may not be able to take part safely
in a range of water-based activities either with school sponsorship or on
holidays with their parents.
National efforts to counter obesity are increasingly emphasising the need
for physical activity as part of every child’s schooling. This must depend
on offering a much wider range of different kinds of physical activity, in
line with what students actually enjoy and want to do and are likely to
carry on doing when they leave school. Well-structured opportunities to take
part in swimming and other water-based sports are therefore needed as
options at secondary level, and the closure of LLC for three years (or will
it be ten? or fifteen?) will block this potential area of development for
many children in Lewisham.
We need to identify the extent of these problems, through surveying local
schools. We can work with local teachers’ union branches to publicise the
implications.
TRAINING AND STAFFING ISSUES
While there may be no deliberate policy of running down LLC, there would be
no incentive for Parkwood Leisure (the contractor) to invest in the
facilities as closure nears. Also, as at other threatened facilities, it may
be hard to retain competent and committed staff and maintain opening hours,
hygiene standards, etc. The council may be relying on this to wear down
opposition to the closure over time: our challenge is to organise to ensure
the opposite happens.
Youth sports leadership courses are being supported by the council, but
where will graduates from these put their knowledge and skills into
practice?
Getting young people involved in the campaign is very important, including
secondary school students as well as primary schools. Young people who speak
up for their pool and what it means to them to be able to swim and the
opportunities it can open up to them (e.g. if you train as a lifeguard it
might help with summer jobs in US holiday camps) can have effective voices
in this debate.
MOBILISING THE HEALTH SECTOR
Exercise referral schemes – where GPs identify patients whose health could
benefit from greater physical activity and refer them, with their agreement,
to sessions and facilities in the leisure sector, are under way in Lewisham.
Closing LLC will limit the options in this area and we can ask local GPs to
tell us how this matters to their patients.
Lewisham Hospital is a major employer and service provider, close to LLC,
and we should be asking for their support, including from unions and
professional groups there.
Some specialties – e.g. diabetes clinics, cardiology, physiotherapy – will
have important things to say about the need for continuing local access to a
wide range of opportunities for active recreation. We should ask them to
tell us about this and to tell the Mayor too.
HOLD THE MAYOR TO ACCOUNT IN PUBLIC
This was and is the Mayor’s decision, which he announced to one of the local
papers before the meeting of the Mayor and Cabinet which was supposed to be
where the decision was finally taken. (Interestingly, the rival local paper
has been far more supportive to our campaign, though this may change when
the campaign’s momentum builds and people see how big a mistake the Mayor
has made.)
The whole point of having a directly elected Mayor is so that everyone knows
where responsibility lies for this kind of decision. People present at any
public events with the Mayor (including media representatives) should be
reminded of that repeatedly, with banners/posters and visual aids (e.g.
inflatable swimming rings). Public embarrassment – in a light-hearted way
that is strictly within the law and cannot be represented as ‘intimidation’
of any sort – is a powerful and effective method to apply political pressure
where it is most needed.
SUGGESTION: the campaign could also set out to “rescue” the Council’s own
leisure strategy, its reputation for competence, and its (loudly proclaimed)
record of excellence in consulting local people. “Not another Clissold
Park!” could be an effective slogan among people who know how disastrous
Clissold Park has been for the people of Hackney… (and for people who don’t
know, we can tell them). So we’re trying to save Steve Bullock himself, and
his Cabinet, from the hole into which they are falling … The campaign could
also be on behalf of the “silenced opposition” in the Cabinet and the Labour
Party. If they deny they have been silenced, and claim they are happy with
the obviously unsatisfactory policy they are landed with, this would only go
to show how effectively they have been silenced. Of course, the more the
campaign pushes along these lines, the more people will ask questions about
the competence of the council.
TALKING TO COUNCILLORS, MPs, AND OTHER POLICY MAKERS
Members of the campaign need to talk to all of the Councillors, so they know
there are people who know what the Council is doing and object to it. Also,
it means they cannot turn up to meetings and say “none of my constituents
has raised this issue”.
Friendly councillors (which includes all of the opposition parties on
Lewisham Council) need to be kept informed of all relevant developments, so
people who are on our side are always better informed than people who don’t
care or might oppose us. The strength of the campaign is that it is from the
grassroots, so there is no question of any councillors telling us what to do
or leading the group. However, we do want the political parties to support
us and to spread the word.
The Greater London Assembly representative for Greenwich and Lewisham, Len
Duvall, was a member of the Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee in the last
session, which was and is likely to remain very supportive of the London
Pools Campaign’s arguments about the need for a London-wide strategy for
local swimming provision. As Greenwich is a ‘host borough’ for the 2012
Olympic Bid, he will be very conscious of how damaging it is, when local
politicians don’t sing from the same songsheet in support of access to
sport.
This is a point which can and should be made to MPs, Ministers and officers
of the 2012 Bid Team and its backers including Sport England and the London
Development Agency, which is also a major partner for Lewisham Council in
the proposed regeneration of Lewisham town centre (the “Lewisham Gateway”
project).
Next year will be a General Election year and so local MPs such as Bridget
Prentice, in whose constituency LLC is located, need to be asked exactly
where they stand on this issue.
CINEMAS: A LESSON FROM HISTORY
For many years now, Lewisham has been one of the only London Boroughs with
no public cinema. A series of schemes have been supposed to lead to a new
cinema, but none of these have come about. This has two implications.
Firstly, the campaign can recognise that the threat to swimming is part of a
wider lack of facilities with cinema as a good example of this. Secondly,
this is a concrete reason why we don’t believe the council’s promise that if
we lose Ladywell, another pool will be along in three years’ time. Equally,
it is a reason why councillors, including Labour councillors, should
approach such claims with extreme caution and join in demanding that LLC
should not close until and unless a proper replacement is actually built.
MEDIA STRATEGIES
Working with the local press is important, but national media may also be
interested, from the BBC and the Guardian (with its interest in local
government issues) through to the Daily Telegraph (where Labour MP Kate
Hoey, a big supporter of the London Pools Campaign, is a sports columnist).
Getting a public billboard was suggested: commercially, this might be too
expensive – though like a full-page ad in a paper, such things can be done
by subscription – or it might be possible to get a local business to provide
a temporary site for the purposes of getting publicity>
