8:04pm Wednesday 11th March 2009
By Oliver Evans
AXED Holywell Mead outdoor swimming pool could be run at a profit if it opened all year round and had a roof built over it, a swimming leader told campaigners tonight.
Neil Bailey, chairman of Wycombe Swimming Action Group, said a membership scheme and rebuilt toddlers pool could attract more visitors to keep open the facility, by The Rye.
He told supporters outraged by Wycombe District Council’s decision to pull funding that anyone who took it over would have to “widen the net and lower the price”.
About 20 people met by the poolside this evening as part of a push by the council’s Liberal Democrat opposition to find another way of keeping the pool open.
The council – which opened the pool in for four months in the summer – argued the facility was under-used and cost too much to maintain.
Mr Bailey, who said he is working with four county schools to keep their pools open, said: “There is a demand for this kind of facility.
“We need a political push and we need to get this thing commercial. If it is not commercial it will not be sustainable.”
Lessons, private hire and a £50 membership scheme could net the pool £250,000 a year, he told the 5.30pm gathering.
The council said the pool would cost £66,000 a year to run and £60,000 over five years to make essential repairs.
Mr Bailey said the roof would “roll back” and a similar pool at Hampton Pool, Hampton Palace, London had prospered.
He said: “They make money in the summer. They break even every month of every year. There are a thousand people in the pool on Christmas Day.”
Yet the toddler pool is a “waste of space” he said and needed a roof and deepening to a metre instead of 0.4m to attract visitors, he said.
Mr Bailey said: “If you look at the difference between pools that make money and break even and those which make a loss, it is all about the customer experience.
“If it is fantastic, if they love it then they buy food and bring their kids down here and spend a lot of time down here.”
Stuart Brown, 38, of Arundel Road, Sands, High Wycombe told the group: “Very few people know about it, what advertising have they done? We found it by accident when we moved here.”
His wife, Louise, also 38, said: “When I discovered it I was over the moon. We did literally stumble across it.”
Sally Baggs, from Court Lawns, Penn, told Bucks Free Press: “I was at Hampton Court on Sunday and it was absolutely heaving. You could get lots of people here.”
And Lyn Simmonds, 53, of Purssells Meadow, Naphill said: “I hope this will make a difference. We have enough enthusiastic people.”
Yet Lib Dem district councillor Trevor Snaith said a plan had to be drawn up quickly.
He said if the council took the pumping units for the pool out of the adjacent Environment Centre then “we are well and truly stuffed”.
Councillor Julia Wassell, who is leading the Lib Dem campaign, has said the pool could be run by a charity, similar to one which kept open Micklefield Library after Buckinghamshire County Council funding was pulled.
She told the group: “We have to make sure we have an option ready [for the council] very very quickly.
“It has a lot of potential done in a different way.”
Some of the people who attended the meeting agreed to then form a committee to drive the plan forward.
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