100 signatures reached
To: Wandsworth Council
Save Putney's 33-metre pool
We call on Wandsworth Council and Places Leisure to halt its plan to divide the 33-metre pool at Putney Leisure Centre into a 25-metre pool and a separate teaching pool.
We are asking the Council to:
- Keep the full-length 33-metre pool for public and lane swimming.
- Pause the reconfiguration before works begin on 1 July. The refurbishment of the gym, studios, changing rooms and café can go ahead without shortening the pool.
- Consult residents and members before making any permanent change to a pool that the public owns and pays for.
Refurbish the centre - yes. But don't shrink our pool, without notice and without asking the people who use it.
We call on Wandsworth Council's new administration - Leader Cllr Aled Richards-Jones and Cllr Ethan Brooks, Cabinet Member for Environment (leisure and sport), to halt the shortening of the 33-metre pool at Putney Leisure Centre into a 25-metre pool. This decision was made by the previous administration and locked into the Places Leisure contract without consulting the residents and members who use and pay for the pool. The current administration inherited it, has pledged transparent decision-making, and is already reviewing major projects and borrowing for value. This is exactly such a project.
We call on Wandsworth Council's new administration - Leader Cllr Aled Richards-Jones and Cllr Ethan Brooks, Cabinet Member for Environment (leisure and sport), to halt the shortening of the 33-metre pool at Putney Leisure Centre into a 25-metre pool. This decision was made by the previous administration and locked into the Places Leisure contract without consulting the residents and members who use and pay for the pool. The current administration inherited it, has pledged transparent decision-making, and is already reviewing major projects and borrowing for value. This is exactly such a project.
Why is this important?
I've been swimming at Putney Leisure Centre for over 16 years. I'll be honest: the centre is run down and tired, and it badly needs modernising - I've more than once thought about coughing up for a posh gym with newer facilities. But I never have. The one thing that's kept me here all these years is the 33-metre pool.
There aren't many pools like it left in the country. It's an increasingly scarce thing, and once it's gone, it's gone - because nobody builds 33-metre pools any more.
But who cares about 33 metres? What's so good about it? For a start, it's simply more water to swim in. The pool gets busy, and those extra eight metres let everyone spread out and find a rhythm. Shrink it to 25 metres and that breathing space disappears. Places Leisure say they'll cap each lane at 14 swimmers in the new pool - so at busy times people will be turned away. And here's the thing: our 33-metre lanes comfortably take 14 swimmers as it is. Cram those same 14 into a lane eight metres shorter and it stops being swimming and starts being queuing.
Modernise the centre - please do. But don't take away the one thing that makes it worth coming to for many people. A permanent change to a pool the public owns and pays for, decided behind closed doors and announced barely a month before it shuts - without consulting a single resident or member. This is our pool. We deserve a say in its future. Please sign, and help us tell the Council to keep our 33-metre pool and to ask us before they change it.
