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Shane McCracken has written a powerful blog post about what it might take to resurrect the local swimming pool in Bradford on Avon, earmarked for closure by Wiltshire county council on the grounds that it will soon no longer afford be able to afford to run it.
Some local politicians seem to think keeping open the pool depends on
persuading the council to meet its "obligations" through campaigning
and petitions. McCracken, however, suggests that a more fundamental
re-assessment of its future is needed: "The swimming pool as we know
it will close. We need to choose if we, as a town, want to keep it. It
needs to become our swimming pool, not the council's. Big society
isn't about closing council-run facilities. They are going to close
anyway. We can't afford them. Big society is a way of keeping them
open."
If the energy and commitment of volunteers can sustain his daughter's
rugby club, argues McCracken, why can't it sustain the local swimming
pool? A bigger business, much more risk, but essentially the same
principle.
McCracken is right in believing this kind of idea didn't start with big society. A colleague pointed me in the direction of Jesmond swimming pool in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which was succesfully taken over by a community group in similar circumstances nearly 20 years ago. How did it succeed?
I spoke to Glenn Armstrong, chief executive of Jesmond swimming
project, a social enterprise which runs the pool on behalf of the
community. Surprisingly easily, he says. Lots of hard work, but a lot
of common sense too.
It took a year to get the business plan together and persuade a
sceptical local authority to hand it over. Just under £90,000 was
raised in grants and pledges, £40,000 of it from local people. But
within months it was turning a profit and attracting more visitors.
Explains Armstrong: "We designed the programme around the customers.
It was now open for swimming when they wanted to swim."
Before, he says, it had been designed around the needs of the council
and the staff. After the takeover, opening hours went from 42 hours a
week to 80. It started to open on bank holidays.
When the pool decided it need a refurb and a gym, it financed half the
£1.5m cost through its own reserves built up over the years (the other
half came in the form of a Lottery grant). It turns over £570,000 a
year, and handles over 140,000 swims. The staff are full time, backed
up with volunteers.
I suggested it succeeded partly because Jesmond was in a fairly
well-off part of the city, with an articulate and expert activist
base. Armstrong accepts that local residents were passionate about the
pool, but points out that a nearby pool, Fenham, in the deprived west
end of Newcastle, has also saved itself by going down the community
ownership route.
So what lessons did he have for people who want to rescue their local
pool? First, decide how badly local people want their pool. Some
community takeovers fail to get off the ground because, ultimately,
residents actually don't use it.
Second, and perhaps surprisingly, get support from the local authority
– they can give crucial business and professional advice. It's an
intersting point. The state and its agencies still matter: big society
swimming pools don't survive in an infrastructure support-free zone.
It will be interesting to see if McCracken's tentative idea gains any
traction. Bradford on Avon is a middle-class market town, with
passionate and articulate residents. It will be interesting to see how
far, when push comes to shove, they really, really want their swimming
pool to survive.
In the meantime McCracken has succeeded in articulating big society
much better, it should be added, than any minister. "Big society
really is a crap name, but I can't think what to call it either. I've
long railed against the idea of encouraging people to volunteer.
People don't volunteer per se. They offer to run schools, clubs,
charities for free."
Patrick Butler is head of Society, Health and Education at the Guardian
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
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