Letter from the Consultant
Dear...,
Many thanks for your email, to which I have been asked to respond on behalf of the Council.
Firstly your comments will be incorporated into the consultation responses and will be reported to the Mayor and Cabinet.
The two main options were set out in the report to Mayor & Cabinet at their meeting on the 16th May. That is redevelopment of Ladywell to provide a new facility or Loampit Vale . However all the consultation surveys allowed other comments to be made and where these have included a preference for refurbishment, they will be included in the results. Our consultation specialists advise that the number of interviewees who expressed the preference for refurbishment would not have increased if a specific option had been included. Generally, interviewees are quite willing to offer their views. Bear in mind the main part of the survey has been the telephone interview with 600 randomly selected residents.
We have asked the market research company used by Wolfenden for this survey if that was their professional opinion that one would get the same amount of answers preferring option three whether you give either two or three options to choose from. It sounds a preposterous statement, bet maybe we misunderstood. We'll post here any answer we get from the market research people if and when we get any.
About the 600 interviews randomly selected there is a serious flaw in the method applied here. In fact the 600 people were selected within a 2 km radius from either Loampit Vale and Ladywell. Only that at 1.6 km north of Loampit Vale there is Wavelengths pool. How can you ask people living there about a pool serving a completely different neighbourhood. One suspect that the choosing of the area has been deliberate, to include people that has less understanding of the issue and can be more easily mislead by the awful questionnaire proposed.
Indeed it has been made clear to the Council during the consultation that refurbishment is the preferred option for some users of Ladywell. However, it would be wrong to assume that refurbishment is a simple or relatively inexpensive and perhaps I can give two examples.
Firstly, there have been suggestions that DDA requirements are minimal. That is not the case. The requirements of both current building regulations as they related to Access for those with disabilities, (physical or otherwise) and the Disability Discrimination Act, mean that extensive works would be required to bring the existing building up to the standards that can rightly expected by users of the centre in the 21st Century. Those works have been assessed at over £300,000.
First thing to notice is that the data for the DDA alone is not given. A further evidence that the costs needed to bring Ladywell to be fully compliant with DDA legislation are negligible, as confirmed by the management of the pool when giving a straight answer to a straight question. The cost here has been aggregated with the eventual refurbishment costs and in the scale of things it doesn't really amount to much. £300k for all you can think of to make the building "up to the standards that can rightly expected by users of the centre in the 21st Century" is a small sum.
Whilst there are many swimmers that like the 33.3 metre length of the main pool, it is not a length recognised by either the Amateur Swimming Association or Sport England. Competitions are held over 25 metres or 50 metres. To adapt the existing pool to allow competitions to take place whilst preserving the existing length is possible but not straight forward...a submersible boom would need to be installed which would be raised into place when competitions were being held.
Well, that is indeed a straight forward thing.
A full and proper refurbishment would mean closure of the centre for at least 21 months. And the risk attached to refurbishment in terms of what one would find when works started, could mean closure for a much longer period.
Hardly believable, refurbishments can be done in stages. With an intelligent planning of a refurbishment the pool would need to be completely closed only for limited amounts of time when works in the pool hall would need to be done. The building is in perfect structural concition and as it's just gone through a refurbishment to also remove asbestos from cavity walls it's known down to the details.
There are other disadvantages in considering refurbishment:
The "freeboard" between the water level and the pool surround does not make for easy access to the water. A new pool would be "deck level" with water at the same level as the surround. This is virtually standard in any new pools and it makes access much easier for young and old alike. This could not be achieved with a refurbishment.
With the current plan for Loampit Vale we would end up with a pool with much less deep end making it much more dangerous for diving, even just from the poolside. And this is only one of the negatives of the plan proposed.
The current sustainable requirements that would be achieved with a new building.... recycling of "brown" water, thermal insulation, significant reduction in its carbon footprint etc... could not be wholly realised with refurbishment.
Demolishing and rebuilding has an enormous environmental impact, why not include that in the calculation?
Once again, the Council appreciates your views and they will be properly represented to the Mayor & Cabinet.
Sure.
Consultant Project Manager
for the London Borough of Lewisham
