Stratford Park Lido is a valuable community asset. For the last ninety years families have been enjoying the unique experience it provides: an outdoor swimming experience using natural spring water, in a lovely setting, with a set of rather beautiful (and listed) diving boards.
I’m not sure many of us realised how valuable the Lido really was until Stroud District Council suddenly announced that it wasn’t going to open this year. There are a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that the council has been advised that it needs to spend £5m to bring it up to a usable and safe standard – apparently the lining, pump, valves and pipework are all beyond repair.
The announcement has sparked considerable strength of feeling. The depth of support was apparent at the council meeting last Thursday evening, and on Saturday morning, when dozens of us met outside the Lido to show our support.
There seem to me to be two issues which need sorting out. We need to dig into the figures and the reality of the options we have. At present we have been given top-line figures. We need to understand the rationale and the costings (£5m is a massive number), and benchmark them against other locations that have faced similar problems. We also need to talk to those communities to see what they did.
We need to understand whether there were missed opportunities to carry out the necessary repair work over the winter. If it was known about sooner, maybe more could have been done to keep the facility open.
