Opinion: ‘Is Peterborough’s new pool a missed opportunity?’

It’s not news that Peterborough needs a replacement for the Regional Pool, it has been on its last legs for a decade or more and has serious problems that will cost large sums to keep putting right.

Replacement is the only option.

And what an opportunity that is to renew the aquatics facility for the city, but, I fear that the plans I have read about have so little real ambition that it is going to be a wasted opportunity to provide a real benefit for the city for the future.

I can applaud the idea of incorporating the well loved hydrotherapy facility into the new regional pool, but I cannot see that having a 25m pool and a hydrotherapy unit will provide the city with an effective replacement for both St George’s and the existing Regional Pool. It will in fact be no more than a new local pool for a small town, certainly not a pool for a regional city that has grown so rapidly over recent years and which has ambitious plans for the future.

Not long after I came to Peterborough, I was asked to attend a meeting with the council and other interested parties to discuss leisure services, specifically diving at the Regional Pool and the need for replacement in the future. One of the things that came out of that meeting was the unsurprising conclusion that Peterborough needed additional water space. Indeed, even in 2006 there was insufficient water space, and an additional two 25m pools were needed at that time to meet the Sport England recommendations. That would mean that to stand still and provide (on 2006 data!), now, the right balance, Peterborough needs a 50 metre pool. But it needs more than that, it needs to retain and promote the diving facility that the Regional Pool could offer.

Currently, the only accessible diving boards are in Corby, a 40 minute journey and, compared to Peterborough, a small local town. There are facilities in Cambridge too, but that is more difficult to get to than Corby, and Sport England research shows that, unless a facility (for almost any sport but especially aquatics) is within a 20 minute journey time, the majority of people, especially children will never get to use them.

Now diving can add a huge amount to a facility, and here I can speak with some degree of knowledge. I was a diving teacher and coach for 40 years until diving at the Regional stopped, and I still travel to Corby when time permits to train as I still compete. I ran a local diving club in Ilford, I was the Chief Executive of an organisation within diving for 10 years and I wrote the nationally distributed guidance for the safe public use and management of diving facilities for the Institute of Sport & Recreation Management (ISRM) in 2008. I also put forward a plan for the refurbishment of the Regional Pool’s diving facilities in 2006 which saw them re-opened to the public in 2007 and I ran very successful diving lessons for the pool operator there until 2015.

Diving adds excitement and fun to a swimming pool, it gives an opportunity for people to scare themselves and challenge themselves, it can build confidence in a way that no other aquatics sport can do. It can also, if properly run and managed, provide a very good income stream to the pool which just swimming alone cannot do.

I have seen this at a number of facilities, in Ilford, Coventry and yes, Peterborough, where the introduction of a sensible public diving programme brings people into the pool for leisure who would not be there just for swimming.

In Peterborough, the re-opening of the diving boards, without any publicity, saw an average of about 40 people queuing up around the diving boards in public time. Using the recommendations and draft rules put out to pools in the UK by the ISRM, the diving boards were full to capacity with people having fun, getting their adrenaline fix and doing so in safety by obeying the rules. The same occurred in Ilford, where the Saturday afternoon session doubled the income of the pool for that time.

As part of an ambitious, well thought out plan, alongside management who are prepared to manage a facility properly the building of a new Regional Pool would be a huge benefit to Peterborough and give the city as a whole a real asset, additionally giving strong revenue streams to justify the extra costs diving does bring.

It is not just about diving either. A pool on similar lines to that in Corby will give a flexible water space which has multiple purposes and which can be used in a variety of different ways allowing its income to be maximised. The diving area for instance, with a moveable floor, can offer anything from diving to shallow water for learning to swim. Opening up the whole pool to 50 metres gives an outstanding training and competitive facility for COPS and which, given Peterborough’s great transport connections, offers a real ‘Regional’ facility to the surrounding area which Cambridge certainly can’t match. It would also link very well with the plans for the new University, offering alongside the POSH, COPS and the Athletics track the opportunity for sports science courses too.

The location though is a problem. Pleasure Fair Meadow is not the right place and the idea of an underground car park would be unique – for good reason – suspending tens of thousands of litres of water over it would cause huge problems and cost. It needs to be adjacent to the current Regional Pool, or the Lido where it would give a great Multisport area. should Peterborough want to hold something like the Youth Games which was so successful in London and other cities.

Come on Peterborough, if we are really serious about being a major regional city, if we really want to give our residents something special, have the ambition to be something other than mediocre and give the city a facility to be proud of and which will last the test of time.

John Whitby

Peterborough