Consultation Q&A
Q: What's so wrong with the new pool?
A:
- the new pool that has been planned is too small for the amount of people it should serve. It will be built as part of a development comprising 754 new flats of which over 400 will be built literally above the pool as part of the same block. Next door to this development there are further developments planned for a total of over 2000 new flats, this is an enormous additional use that will in effect make this pool work at full capacity with just the residents of these new developments. In effect the pool will be the "lifestyle" pool of the new developments whilst the current users will loose much of the access that they enjoy now as it will be too busy.
- the pool will not have natural light, it will be built in the internal courtyard of this husing block with a garden on its roof blocking all natural light.
- the pool will only have a 1.8m deep end thus not allowing diving. Ladywell has 3.8m.
- there is no dry sports area to speak of. Only the gym is larger compared to Ladywell, there is no sports hall, squash court, climbing wall or any other sport facility that one would expect in a development as this.
Q: Surely the Council must have done some work to decide what it is that they need to build. Didn't they?
A: They hired a consultant to tell them what they wanted to be told. The document he produced is not worth the paper it's written on. Large chunks of the catchment area have been left out of the calculation. We repeatedly challenged the Council on this matter, the officers have always dodged the questions and the Mayor was happy with that.
Q: The new pool will be better because it will be new, isn't it?
A: Wait until it gets old. At least Ladywell pool is on its own land and it can be refurbished, expanded and modified with flexibility, a leisure centre stuck in the middle of a housing block is just what you'll ever get and this plan is awfully poor.
Q: But Ladywell isn't that good, the Mayor said so.
A: the Mayor is free to think what he wants although we think that sometimes he could keep his personal opinions to himself, especially when speaking means rubbishing a pride of the community as the Ladywell Leisure Centre is.
We would be the first to admit that Ladywell pool is outdated and in need of some changes but the council has put a lot of effort into trying to convince the public that renovation is not a cost-effective course of action.
Unfortunately our investigation has shown that the council's figures are at best inaccurate, at worst misleading. In its time Ladywell Baths was a flagship building for the borough attracting visitors to the pool and Turkish Baths from all over South London - and with a little bit of attention to visitor's needs it could do so again.
If the council's planned replacement for Ladywell was better than the existing facilities we would have been more than happy. However, the council wants to fob the residents of Lewisham off with a substandard option. This is simply not good enough.
Over £1.4m was recently spent on it, the pool room roof and ceiling was redone, the heating plant and many other features had extensive works. The pool is in a much better condition than many other newer centres and to bring it up to a very good standard would only cost a fraction of the cost of a new pool and it could be done without prolonged closure.
Q: The Council says that if we keep Ladywell it'll be closed for at lest two years to re-do it.
A: Again, the Council is trying to mislead. They have declared that they don't want to refurbish Ladywell Pool so that the only way to keep a pool there would be to demolish and rebuild. This is completely absurd also because that's a very expensive option and they don't have any money to do that.
Q: Why is the Council doing this?
A: It has all to do with the "regeneration" of the Town Centre and nothing to do with sport.There are a lot of developments going up around the Town Centre and many of the plots of land are currently property of the Council and they are on sale for high density housing - a 'lifestye" pool there will increase the value of the land that the Council is selling and as it will be so busy (overcrowded) it will be financially more convenient in the long run. And as the new pool would occupy virtually no land at all as it will be stuck in the middle of this block, this releases more land for re-development and that's the land currently occupied by Ladywell Pool.
Q: Ladywell Pool is 33.5 m long that's not standard measure for competition.
A: That's true. On the other hand most leisure users and non-club swimmers prefer a longer pool.
All other pools are now 25 m long so Ladywell offers something different that many value and cannot be found anywhere else and longer than standard pools can be made to standard measure during competitions using a movable boom, this is a common and inexpensive way round it.
The answer here is that probably there isn't an answer. Some like it one way, some like it another.
Q: Is Ladywell Pool accessible to the disabled?
A: Yes. The gym is at ground floor, the pool floor is reachable by lift and there is a machine to lower people of low mobility in the water.The Council has recently used the argument that it isn't compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act to justify the decision of not considering its refurbishment. To be fully compliant with the DDA there are only very minor works that need doing like an extra rail in the disabled toilets and braille translation on the lifts' buttons. There is room for improving the disabled experience and a refurbishment could well do that.
