Minute of the third public meeting
Minutes by Ian Crosson
About 50 people attended our 3rd meeting which considering there was an England
football match on was respectable.
Update on campaign
Max Calo and Ian Crosson informed the meeting of developments over the last
month. We now have 3000 signatures to keep the pool open. We have had more
coverage in the NewShopper and finally had a letter and article printed in
the Mercury. We organised a lobby of Pauline Morrison, a Ladywell Labour
councillor who never showed up for her surgery nor gave any apologies! We
have contacted 2 MP’s, Joan Ruddock and Bridget Prentice who have both said
they will make representations to the council in the next few days. We
attended the Meet the Mayor meeting in Brockley on Tues 7th Sept and we gave
Steve Bullock a very clear message. Unfortunately he said that education is
his number one priority and that he will not be changing his decision. We
think we can change his mind but it requires a huge amount of pressure if we
are to succeed. There is also an exhibition by the London Pools campaign at
Life and Masons café in Ladywell village which is a photo exhibition of
pools that have closed down around London. We collected 120 signatures in an
hour outside Life café while people visited the exhibition.
General discussion
Socialist Party councillor Chris Flood gave his full support to the campaign
and said we should make links with Lewisham hospital. Sheila Amrouche from
Lewisham NUT and Respect told us that the NUT will be circulating the
petition in local schools and have donated £100 to the campaign.
Other key points
- We are in favour of a new school and a pool not one or the other.
- Ladywell is a unique pool very good for learning to scuba dive
- We need to make sure that the new pool will be an upgrade
- The leisure centre is not just the pool but the gym, meeting rooms,
churches. We need to work with all users of the centre
- CCL the company that were running the pool have been replaced with
Parkview. Who are they? Are there any penalty clauses that the council will
have to pay if the centre closes in 2007?
- A brilliant suggestion to organise a public debate with the Mayor on LLC.
We agreed we would do this after the lobby of the council on the 15th Sept.
If we don’t win on that day we will continue the campaign.
- Does the council need planning permission for a change of use? We know
they have to announce a change of use. We need to find out a bit more about
the legal requirements/ timescale about this.
- We could contact John Prescott’s dept on the planning issue.
- We could also contact the district auditor on the financial rationale for
closing the site.
Building for the Lobby of the council
The march and lobby will take place next Weds, 15th Sept. We are assembling
outside Ladywell Leisure Centre at 6pm and leaving around 6.30pm and
marching to the town hall for 7pm. At the full council meeting we will be
handing in our petition with 1000’s of signatures. We have a motion
supported by all the opposition councillors which calls on the Labour Party
to keep the pool open until the replacement is built. We want a huge march
and lobby to put maximum pressure on the Labour councillors who continue to
ignore public opinion.
We have produced 10.000 leaflets to advertise the march. All the leaflets
were distributed at the meeting which is fantastic.
Streets that will be leafleted
Lewisham High St
Hither green Lane
Ladywell Road
Vicars Hill
Chalsey Road
Shops in Deptford High St
Honor Oak Park
Garfield Road
Manor Park
Leahurst
Longhurst Road
Dermody Road gardens
Ennersdale Road
Manor Lane
Algiers Road
Algernon Road
Marsala Road
Lewisham Park
Phoebeth Road
Francemary Road
Limes Grove
Mercator Estate
Lee High road shops
New Cross train station
Tressillain Road
Wickham Road
St John’s Road
Albyn Road
Ashmead Road
Dalrymple Road
Beechcroft
Whitbread
Belmont Hill
Rushey Green
Davenport Road
Campaign stalls
We want to keep petitioning up to the lobby. We will be having petitioning
and giving out leaflets at the following times and days. We will be doing
the stalls outside Lewisham library.
Sat 11th September
We want to run a continuous stall from 10-4 on Lewisham’s busiest shopping
day.
10-11 Ian and Sheila
11-12 Alice and Paul
12-1 Mary and Max
1-2 Maggie and Glyn
2-3 Wally and Ros
3-4 Chris and Andy
If you know anyone else who can help out on these stalls come on down the
more the merrier!
Sun 2-4pm Max, Steve and Glyn
LEAFLETTING OF TRAIN STATIONS
Mon 13th September
Lewisham station dlr entrance 7.30-8.30am Michael
Ladywell station 7.30-8.15am Sheila
Tues 14th September
Lewisham station DLR entrance 6-7pm Frida and George and Toby
THE LOBBY ITSELF
Teresa and Amina are making a banner for the march.
We need some people to help steward the march and the lobby outside the town
hall.
Voluntary stewards so far: Brenda, Amina and Michael.
We will also need a few people with buckets to pay for all the leaflets we
have produced.
Finance
We now have a bank account and we really do need money to pay for all the
leaflets and rooms we have used. The more money we have the more things we
can produce for the campaign! Please write cheques to: Save Ladywell Pool
Campaign, You can bring cash or cheques to the lobby/ stalls or send it to
Save Ladywell Pool Campaaign
116b Algernon Road
London
SE13 7AW
