Petition speech to Council Meeting at RBC - 6th March 2014

Following the Radcliffe on Trent Parish Council Open Meeting in early February, the Save Radcliffe Pool group has met twice. At our first meeting, the group felt strongly that the community were not given the opportunity at the Open Meeting to discuss ways to save the pool; after initially being allowed time to express our views we were told that we should forget about saving the pool and look to start fundraising for a new one. 

However, we are not confident that the offer of land which Kay Cutts thought she had secured will come to fruition and, having compared the figures for keeping the current pool and building a new one, we believe our best chance of having a pool in the village is to find ways to keep the current pool.

We therefore agreed to continue our efforts, until all options had been exhausted and decided that the best place to submit our petition was to Rushcliffe Borough Council, who are in charge of leisure facilities in our borough.

On Thursday 6th March 2014 we were invited to submit our petition to the Council Meeting at Rushcliffe Borough Council Civic Centre. One of our group was allowed to speak for 5 minutes about our campaign before the petition was handed over. 

Here is the speech in full.
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I am representing the views of the Radcliffe on Trent community on behalf of the Save Radcliffe Pool group, which was formed spontaneously following publication on 20 December 2013 of the South Nottinghamshire Academy's plan to close the community swimming pool as part of their much needed rebuild.

Our aims were:

a)   to explore how many others in the community feel as we do by the use of a petition, and

b)   to raise awareness of the circumstances surrounding the decision.

Our objectives to the pool closure have been

a)   to demonstrate the support in the community

b)   to encourage SNA to reconsider the closure of the pool, and

c)    to search for funding and seek alternatives to the current management of a pool in Radcliffe .

The Reasons for Objection are:

a)   Community involvement with fund raising for the original build 40+ years ago and since then the voluntary investment as lifeguards, assistants and trainers,

b)   Impact of losing life saving expertise in the area,

c)    Need/demand for leisure facilities in the village

d)   Negative impact on health and well-being of residents, as well as

e)   Consequences on hundreds of families who currently use the pool to learn to swim or to keep fit/socialise.

We are asking support from RBC, in advance of the planning processes in June/July, to ask the Education Funding Agency, DfE and SNA to:

• Reconsider the location of the rebuild, to leave the pool in place, by, for example a) finding the money for temporary classrooms (between £200-500k) or b) looking again at a 3 storey design
• Allow community access to the pool whilst ensuring safeguarding, and
• Give the residents time to search for funding and seek alternative commercial or charitable management of the facility. This includes a potential request to RBC for annual grant funding towards on-going running costs incurred by ROTSPA, the registered charity which has run and managed the pool for many years whilst most of the costs have been met by SNA.

The petition has shown considerable support for a pool in Radcliffe on Trent, as within only two months we have gathered 948 signatures, including around 10% of the village’s population. Interestingly, 16% of the signatures are from outside of the village, some saying that they choose to swim because of the pool’s temperature, cleanliness and teachers after being unhappy with standards at other neighbouring pools.

Our investigations show that the pool would only need around £100k investment initially and then estimated at circa £50k per annum to break even which is much more realistic than starting again and having to raise £2m+ for a new pool. The likelihood of being able to build another such facility in the village would be slim. Initial suggestions that land has been secured on the new SNA site are still to be confirmed.

In light of RBC’s on-going review of the provision of leisure facilities in the Borough, maintaining the existing pool in Radcliffe and providing limited funding towards its running costs would represent a very small amount of the future leisure costs for the borough, being much smaller running costs currently associated with other pools in the area. 

This would also help to redress the imbalance in funding for leisure facilities provided to Radcliffe residents over the 40 years of Rushcliffe’s existence compared with the significant sums incurred on expenditure in comparable sized locations such as Bingham, East Leake, Keyworth and Cotgrave, not to mention the disproportionate element of spending in West Bridgford.

Our community feel strongly that it is such a waste of a very good facility and some initial preliminary findings of the Radcliffe Community Plan Questionnaire indicate that residents are already asking for more rather than fewer leisure facilities in the village.

We would strongly urge RBC to review their funding of leisure facilities, to recognise that Radcliffe deserves a fairer share of the facilities across the borough. If we could gain regular financial support from RBC, we would be in a stronger position to show SNA that we could maintain this facility in the future.

Another way that RBC could show commitment to the village is to step forward and offer the £200-500k needed for temporary classrooms, which the DfE is not prepared to pay, hence why the pool gets knocked down because it will not cost them a penny to do so compared to other options.

We really appreciate being given the opportunity this evening, to tell you about our cause, and look forward to hearing from you in response to our petition very soon.

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We have been advised that the chief executive will write to us in the near future responding to the petition. We will update you as soon as we hear more!