LIZ LONGS FOR POOLED RESOURCES

WITH London 2012 just over four years away, a campaign in the capital has dived into the debate over British grassroots sport.

The London Pools Campaign, started in 2000, is seeking to make the issue of healthy living through swimming a top priority for city councils. Despite the recent pledge from Culture Secretary Andy Burnham to make swimming free for all by 2012, campaign co-ordinator Liz Hughes doesn’t think enough is being done to save swimming facilities in London.

“The pools campaign people are quite divided. Half of pools campaigns and pool user groups are made up of competitive swimmers and swimming clubs who are generally very much in favour of the Olympics and want sport to be promoted” she said, during an interview at Haggerston School in Hackney.

“We’d like to have somewhere for people to swim within 15 minutes of every Londoner"

London pools campaigner Liz Hughes

 

Liz became a pools campaigner after the closure of the Victorian era Haggerston Pool facility in 2000. She believes that the pool was closed by Hackney Borough Council to save £300,000 in refurbishment costs, whilst £32m was approved to build a new pool at nearby Stoke Newington.

 

“Swimming could be something that makes a city liveable, and it could mean that you don’t need to fly to Spain for your holiday because your local lido is just such a nice place to be”

At Haggerston School, children are involved in making costumes for an annual street parade, whichcalls for the reopening of Haggerston Pool. The “Laburnum Street Party”, which has been turned into acarnival occasion for Haggerston has brought the issue of pool closures to the attention of Parliament, and has gained the support of Hackney South and Shoreditch MP Meg Hillier. Hackney does have three community swimming pools, but, for Liz, the pools campaign has a simple aim. “We’d like to have somewhere for people to swim within 15 minutes of every Londoner” she said.

Investment in the campaign from financial giant UBS has allowed Liz to work three days a week on the pools campaign, and she remains determined to make swimming a key part of community living in Hackney. When asked about the 2012 aquatics centre being built in Newham at a cost of over £200m, she said: “The other half of London Pools Campaign and local pools campaigns are more community activists or people who used to swim and are more interested in having pools open for old people and the whole community, and are not particularly interested in competitive sport.

“They would take a much less favourable view of that amount of money being spent on one swimming pool, when if it was distributed out, it could probably build twenty swimming pools” she said. She remains particularly passionate about the reopening of lidos in the capital, and said: “Swimming could be something that makes a city liveable, and it could mean that you don’t need to fly to Spain for your holiday because your local lido is just such a nice place to be”.

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