Banks torpedo £1m pool facelift plans (From Daily Echo)

Plans to improve Shirley Swimming Pool scuppered by bank

10:18am Tuesday 2nd June 2009 in Financial Crisis By Echo Reporter

he grand plans for Shirley Pool.

A POPULAR family swimming pool is facing a bleak future after banks pulled funding offers for a much needed £1m rebuild.

Shirley Pool in Southampton was due for a major refurbishment this summer that would have created a larger two-storey building with extra changing rooms, a café, children’s gym and dance studio.

But the plans to create a leisure centre today lie in tatters.

Despite the owners raising more than £300,000 towards the project, NatWest, Barclays and Allied Irish banks all declined to authorise loan offers made by local managers.

A funding bid to the Amateur Swimming Association was also turned down. Shocked pool boss Dave Perry, 50, said: “Unless there is someone out there with £500,000 to spare that wants a pool named after them, the future looks bleak.”

The pool was built in 1974 as a dedicated teaching centre and now provides lessons for 1,300 swimmers all ages and abilities. There are also general swimming sessions throughout the year.

The 25 metre pool in Kentish Road, which attracts around 155,000 visitors a year, has a leaky roof, corroded beams, dated changing rooms and no air conditioning.

Mr Perry, managing director of West End Swim School, said: “We have been working on this for ten years, spent £85,000 and are half way through the foundations.

“ We may be able to squeeze a few more years of life by cutting off the roof and repairing the beams but it is a short term measure.

“We had a real battle to get the plans approved and it feels like we have wasted so much time and money. I can’t see any way of recovering what we have invested so far.”

Councillors threw out a requirement for £7,500 of nearby paving repairs in exchange for five years of free weekly swimming lessons for nearby Foundry Lane Primary School and St Mark’s Junior School.