We’ve had a couple of updates from the council now, so where are we at with the Lido? (Plus a bit of Stop Press - read to the end!)

👏The good news is:

💦 The council has publicly committed to *try* and get the outdoor pool open by 20 July, and has set aside £200k of revenue and re-iterated there’s also £900k of capital budget. Which should be plenty, according to our experts.

💦 They’ve been talking regularly to SOLS technical experts about the technical details of making the summer opening happen.

💦 They have identified some contractors they want to work with to do all essential maintenance and have been talking to them
and contracted them to do some planning work, to start with.

💦 Something is definitely happening - there’s been a fair bit of activity on site - though it’s been surveying / planning work, not yet actual construction / maintenance work (bar some preliminary shot blasting to assess scope). 

💦 The council seems to be trying to find solutions and workrounds for the issues they have raised around health and safety, such as putting fences on low walls that are “fall hazards”.

💦 They have invited SOLS to their meetings to talk about the medium / long term.

💦 They have published two updates and the leadership has been quite responsive to our emails and messages. 

🚨We still have some concerns:

💦 Their update suggests that if it does open, the pool will close after 6 weeks ie by 31 August, rather than staying open in September which would be sensible. 

💦 We are not sure where they are at with recruiting lifeguards, which we have offered to help with. 

💦 The council has not yet published any of its target dates for critical milestones to opening, so it’s hard to assess their progress on essential works and the critical path to opening. 

💦 They have not as yet actually engaged a contractor to do main works (as opposed to planning). This seems to be in the pipeline, but…

💦 They still seem unclear about their right to use “urgency” provisions to procure the works without too much red tape.

💦 They also seem a bit unclear about their right to use not just a £200k revenue budget, which is all the updates talk about, but also some of the capital budget they’ve set aside (for works that will last several seasons or longer). 

💦 The flow of information to the public and SOLS is less clear than we would like, both about the short term and the medium/long term thinking.

✊So whilst there’s grounds for hope, and we couldn’t have done this without our amazing  supporters, we’re not there yet! 

🙌Want to help?

✋ Please do continue talking to district and town / parish councillors (who also need to play a role in protecting the lido’s long term future) about what it means to you. 

✍️ And do keep filling in our survey - your responses will help us make the case.
https://savestroudlido.org/take-our-survey/

We’ve also added a question about volunteering - let us know if you’re interested in helping in any way

💙 And thank you - we are so energised and inspired by all the amazing support we have had. 🙏

We have heard from so many people who have told us the outdoor pool is “a lifeline”, “a sanctuary”, that it is vital to mental health and social cohesion and wellbeing for people of all ages and backgrounds. 

💦 Let’s keep doing this!

📰 Stop press 📰
We have seen the offer from Dale Vince to help out with costs for this summer. We really appreciate the amazing vocal support Dale has offered the lido campaign from the start, and we are keen to keep talking to anyone who is able to offer help to get the lido open, so we have reached out to his people again this weekend.