Lido Woes and the Misery of Brixton Rec
Early Sunday morning and @BrockwellLido was bloody closed - again. After the run of five closures during the balmy days of June, I thought Fusion had finally understood how to manage an outdoor swimming pool.
Only yesterday and I was commenting to the lovely Lido Peter how the clear, blue waters of Lake Brockwell have returned, just in time for the season close at the end of September. Sunday morning however had the familiar “chemical imbalance” given as the reason for the lack of aquatic action.
Bugger.
To be fair to Fusion, all members have been offered a 10% discount on the joining fee for the 2011 season. Cynics might say that this serves only as an incentive to sign up yet again. What’s the point if you’re buggering off @BrockwellLido continues to suffer the same fate next summer?
Having dragged my backside down to Brockwell Park early on Sunday morning, the inconvenience for me was more of a personal and emotional disappointment.
The tally chart counting down my final days of outdoor swimming in SE24 is almost in single digits. A closed pool is about as welcome as a LambethLabour pledge of “free swimming for every resident” right now.
Ah yes - about that pre-election promise of “free swimming for every resident…”
In the absence of any @BrockwellLido action, I returned down Railton Road and found myself staring into the abyss of Brixton Rec.
Blimey.
The queue at reception finally cleared after five minutes - this was 9am on a Sunday morning, after all. Ahead of me to be served was a young mother with three small kids. She asked for an adult swimming ticket, and three passes for the free swimming for her children.
“Sorry,” said the GLL receptionist. “Free swimming is no longer available.” A price was quoted, which didn’t leave much change out of a £20 note. Not surprisingly the young mother had to explain to her three small kids that swimming wasn’t going to happen today.
I paid my £3.50, and then walked past the petition on the wall set up by the Brixton Rec Users Group. It calls for @LambethLabour to reconsider its decision to slash free swimming for under 16′s and over 60′s. The election pledge of “free swimming for every resident” has long since been sacrificed.
I’m told that just over 2,000 signatures have so far been collected by local leisure users - quite an achievement. One thousand more are still required for the Rec Users Group to force the next Full Council meeting to actually take the petition seriously and debate the matter.
That Lambeth Life Power to the People twaddle of a headline is looking more false as the @LambethLabour cuts start to kick in.
With the disappointment of Brockwell behind me, and now ready to experience the delights of Brixton Rec on a Sunday morning, I showered and slipped into the pool. Five minutes later and I was finished.
It was simply impossible to undertake any form of exercise in a public pool that is rammed bumper to bumper with swimmers early on a Sunday morning. That’s what happens when the “success story” of leisure in Lambeth leads to only one pool that is actually open in the entire borough.
I’ll be back at the waters of Lake Brockwell come Monday morning. If the “chemical imbalance” is still lingering, I’ll have to admit defeat and accept that the buggers have won.
“Free swimming for every resident?”
Only in the Rotten Borough…
20/09/2010 at 8:21 am Permalink
From a lido regular, Monday 20th September…
********
This morning, Monday, for the third day in a row, Brockwell Park Lido has been closed, due to chlorination levels.
Yesterday, Sunday, I came at 9.30am and was told that “due to mechanical failure during the night”, chlorine levels weren’t adequate. I came back at 2.30pm and it was still closed, but, as promised, I later got a phone call to say it had reopened and in compensation for the closure would stay open till 7pm. I had a lovely, mostly solitary, swim till 6.30pm.
However, I learned that the pool had also closed at 5.30pm on the Saturday, also due to chlorine levels, so when I had been told that the filtration machine had broken down on Sunday “during the night”, it may have been the case, but it wasn’t wholly true.
For some, including me, this economy with the truth/failure to be be open with the paying public, makes a bad situation worse and it is not just a one-off; it seems to be a corporate habit: when weekend opening changed to 8am - a great move, showing response to public comment - on one day the pool wasn’t open at 8am and we were told “the lifeguards didn’t turn up”. True, but the reason they didn’t turn up was that the lifeguard agency - what a disaster that has turned out to be - hadn’t told the lifeguards, and Fusion hadn’t reminded the agency, the new opening hours. So the poor old lifeguards got it in the neck, while those responsible at a corporate level got off scot-free.
Today, Monday, 7am, pool closed again. Nothing about it on the Fusion website. The receptionist unable to tell me an estimated opening time.
Things had been going so well, the water quality wonderful for ages. Now, closures three days in a row. Again, one has to ask - are there systems in place, or has the departure of an excellent manager like Helen meant it’s back to the bad old days? Looking at the latest BLU email, it seems BPL is now up to full staffing complement: surely systems and PR need to take a back seat until the team can jointly ensure the basics - delivering the service the public pays for?
20/09/2010 at 2:36 pm Permalink
Very interesting anecdote. The official line is that free swimming mostly used by families who ‘would have gone even if they’d had to pay’. Working in a public sector organisation myself, I’m aware that they’ll be in some kind of massive prioritisation exercise at the moment trying to work out what they have to cut. But I thought this was a great shame. £3.50 isn’t bad. It’s a fiver at most central London pools.