Pool in peril (Oxford)

The decision made by the council at the recent CEB to proceed to the tender stage for a new pool at BLLC and to close TCP was unsafe and unsound because the council hasn’t provided all the information, has provided misleading information and has hidden behind the Fusion contract confidentiality. When challenged on each of the points raised below, the council has been unable to answer them.

TCP = Temple Cowley Pools & Fitness Centre (swimming pool, diving pool, sauna, steam room, gym, studio) - the one the council wants to close so they can sell off the land

BLP = Blackbird Leys Pool - the one that's there at the moment

BLLC = Blackbird Leys Leisure Centre - the 'dry' facility that's there at the moment, where the council want to build a new pool for £16.5m

Lack of Democracy
The Save Temple Cowley Pools & Fitness Centre petition is the largest ever in the city of Oxford. This is a significant statement of what the people want – blatantly ignored by the council.

Value for Money
The cost of a leisure centre must be balanced with the amenity it provides. A white elephant costing us only £150k pa is not value for money – well-used facilities easily accessible from a number of communities, properly maintained and operated for the public good not private profit, are.

"Multi-faceted User Experience"
The council says that a new swimming pool at BLLC will provide an enhanced user experience. People visit leisure centres to swim, go to the gym, or do other forms of exercise or leisure. This is what people do at TCP already, but they often combine visiting TCP with visiting the library, surgery, Templars Square and the Retail Park. This "experience" is not possible at BLLC.

Disabled Access
TCP is already compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) – it could be improved at a reasonably low cost, as could all older facilities. A new pool at BLLC will offer no greater access than TCP.

Blackbird Leys Leisure Centre is Underused
BLLC is currently underused, running at only 30% of capacity, and the council hopes that it will prevent it becoming a white elephant by pouring money into it. People in the locality don’t fully use it at present, why will they in future?

Forecast Usage
After refusing to provide forecasts of usage, claiming "confidentiality", the council has finally convinced Fusion to do so - coincidentally, just in time for the Scrutiny Committee (!). The council claims that the new pool will attract 375,000-400,000 visits a year, in line with their aspiration to use a new pool to increase leisure takeup. This represents £135 a visit subsidy - the council claim that the current £2 a visit subsidy is way too high?! This translates into about £2,000 per additional user. The TCP Survey shows that 7,000 fewer people will use leisure facilities if TCP closes, so the council is spending £16.5m for no increase in fitness in the city. And this level of pool use is unrealistic – 400,000 visits each year equates to 1,300 visits a day for swimming – is 130 swimmers per hour (8 in each lane at all times) at BLLC really likely?

Private Profit
The Council will pay Fusion £150,000 a year to operate a new pool at BLLC. Fusion will take most of the income from visitors - it's not clear how much, as the Council won't say, claiming 'confidentiality'. But whatever it is, it will be in total more than it would cost the Council to run it. If the visitor numbers mean that Fusion don't make a profit, they can walk away, leaving the Council, and the council taxpayers, with a white elephant to fund, when it should be in a better place, in Temple Cowley. And the £150,000 a year payment is only guaranteed a maximum of six years, when the Fusion contract ends anyway. The council has no certainty as to what it will cost us all after that.

Existing TCP Users
Our survey shows that 7,000 of the existing users will be unable, because of time and/or cost, to be able to get to BLLC. The council is ignoring and abandoning them, cares more about money than offering leisure facilities to its council taxpayers, and intends to withdraw all public leisure inside the ring road in east and south Oxford.

Flood Risk
TCP is not at risk of flooding – BLLC is! according to the latest Environment Agency research. There will be additional cost on top of the new build that has not been included in the £16.5m.

Schools
Nine schools use BLP, three use TCP. They won’t have enough time to share the pool. And there won’t be as much public swimming time as there is at present. And the pupils at the three schools using TCP will lose classroom time, have extra travelling and won't be able to use the library on their swimming visits. And someone will have to pay for the additional transport.

Bias
The council has only offered one option, and commissioned a biased and unbalanced ‘Feasibility Study’ – the closure of both TCP and BLP and the Swimming Club are threatened if BLLC does not go ahead.

Accessibility
TCP is only 0.7 miles from the ring road and just off a main route with only 100 yards of residential housing set back from the road. BLLC is inaccessible from Sandy Lane anti-clockwise (the council claims it is), and is 1.2 miles from the ring road at the BMW roundabout of which 0.6 miles is 20mph speed limit in a built-up area.

Public Transport
Eighteen (18) bus services pass through Temple Cowley close to TCP; only 2 (also travelling through Temple Cowley) go to BLLC. Which site is more accessible by public transport from anywhere in Oxford?

Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from buildings are measured by gas and electricity usage. Per square metre, Barton and Ferry both emit nearly 50% more than TCP. TCP emissions could be significantly reduced through two simple measures – sort out the power matching (20% of electricity wasted at present) and fit pool covers.

Car Park Spaces
Parking is currently free, and used heavily for school run (to St Christophers school) and unofficia ‘park and ride’. A barrier/token system would eliminate this issue.

Age of the Pool
The council tells us that TCP is near its ‘end of life’, and gives various ages for it, sometimes back to the 1930s.
Wrong.
TCP in its present form was opened in 1986. The council’s condition survey, repeated in the Mace report, says TCP is in ‘fair’ condition and ‘midlife’. The maintenance TCP needs is because the council has not kept maintaining it properly for ten years. The council total budget for TCP maintenance over the next year is only £25,000 while huge amounts of money are being poured into Barton, Blackbird Leys and Ferry centres. Faringdon Leisure Centre has been operating for 20 years and shows no sign of needing to be replaced. Reading's main pool is 40 years old, popular, working well and making a profit.

Maintenance
The council claims that there is a maintenance backlog of £2.3m at TCP before any improvements can be made, with a pillar and air handling unit being the most critical. The council claims that TCP is at increasing risk of “catastrophic failure”. The council’s own Condition Survey rates TCP as in “fair” condition and at “midlife”. FOI on the £2.3m backlog reveals that the pillar would cost only £30k to repair, and the air handling unit only £750.

TCP Land for Student Housing
We believe that the council wants to sell the TCP land for housing to Oxford Brookes University at a knockdown price of only £1.5m. (This is not denied when we put it to them). As well as benefiting the University, this would open the way to closing the library for yet more housing.

The Fusion Contract
The contract with Fusion, who operates the leisure centres for the council, is not a public body. The council claims it saves £7m over 10 years, but the contract says that they have to invest £6m of this in improvements (but not in TCP or BLP), so the saving is only £100,000 a year. Fusion believes they will make more money from BLLC, so the contract offers financial benefits if the council closes TCP.

Bigger, Better Facilities
A common myth is that a new pool at BLLC would be Olympic size (50m), with sauna, flumes and other entertainments.
Wrong.
In fact, the proposed pool will be the same size as TCP, 25m x 8 lanes. No diving pool, no sauna, no steam room and nothing else. There may be a graded learner pool. The pool will certainly be new, but only designed to last only 25 years, not 50 years or more like TCP.

Please join us in the campaign to save TCP and keep leisure facilities in Oxford.
 http://savetemplecowleypools.webs.com