Tag Archives: Friends of Sparkhill Baths

Public Meeting on Sparkhill Baths redevelopment

A public meeting to detail progress and gauge opinion on the redevelopment of Sparkhill Baths takes place next Tuesday, July 26th (7pm) at Sparkhill Cultural Centre, Stratford Road (next door to the existing baths building). The meeting is organised by the Save Our Swimming campaign group and the panel will include Councillor Martin Mullaney, Birmingham [...]

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Decisions on Sparkhill Baths Rebuilding

Tonight a discussion on the rebuilding of Sparkhill Pool and Fitness Centre will take place at the Hall Green Constituency Committee. We would encourage all regular swimmers and gym users to attend to ensure that their views are taken into account at what could be a very important meeting in deciding who rebuilds, finances and manages the new facility.

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Investigating Leisure Trusts

It appears that many councillors and council officers within Birmingham City Council are keen to transfer leisure services within Birmingham, including all swimming pools into a ‘Leisure Trust’. They are expected to vote on this in the coming months.

A Leisure Trust is essentially an independent body which will take the responsibility for providing the services that the council currently has a statutory duty to provide. Many councils currently use this model. Many reasons are cited for this, not least the ability to raise more funds that are currently unavailable to local authorities.

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Abandoned

The Guardian put out a request for readers’ photos on the theme ‘derelict’ last week. The result was a collection of some of the most heartbreaking pictures of buildings which are a shadow of their former glory.

Amongst the pictures was a photo from Emma Jones of the Gala Pool at Moseley Road Baths which you can view on the Guardian’s site. I’m not sure how I feel about it: the pool is absolutely gorgeous, even in its present state, and I think that the more publicity the building has the better, but it’s absolutely shameful that such a building remains in the ownership of Birmingham City Council in such a state. I feel embarrassed that my local pool should so frequently be on ‘most endangered’ and ‘most neglected’ lists, but it seems that our local politicians share no such concern.

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Sparkhill Consultation

As part of the Council’s ongoing plans for replacing Sparkhill Pool and Fitness Centre they have called a series of consultations for this week.  So far it appears that consultations have not had any mention of how the building should be financed and managed, something which campaigners over in Sparkhill believe is absolutely fundamental to [...]

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Sparkhill Residents Reject PFI Swimming Pool Proposals

A public meeting of Sparkhill residents last night unanimously rejected proposals for a PFI-funded swimming pool on the Moseley School site in Springfield Road to replace the former pool on Stratford Road, which closed in July 2008 after 77 years of service owing to major structural defects.

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United against PFI scheme

At the Friends of Moseley Road Baths meeting with Cllr Mullaney on 21st January we discussed options for funding swimming provision in Hall Green Constituency. Three options have been put on the table for the urgent work required to ensure that Sparkhill has swimming facilities. Two of these involve building new swimming facilities on the current site, with costs estimated at £10m and £13m respectively. A third involves a PFI pool at Moseley School as part of their new sports and leisure facilities which has been costed at £3m.

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