Brockwell Lido could face “an extended period of closure” if a new body needs to take over its management, the chair of the Brockwell Lido Users group (BLU) warned today (16 November).
Ben Longman was speaking at the annual general meeting of BLU at the lido.
The meeting heard from a senior manager of Fusion Lifestyle, which currently runs the lido, that its future management depends on a meeting with bankers at the end of this month.
Mark Rogers, Fusion Lifestyle community and partnerships director, said that, like other organisations, Fusion had taken a “Covid large business interruption loan”. In its case, the loan was for about £13m.
It had helped to keep open Brockwell Lido and about 60 other facilities run by Fusion, he said.
Repayment of the loan is due in May 2026.
Rogers said that Fusion had, so far, been unable to reach agreement with the bank that made the loan.
This was the reason it had been unable to carry out promised repairs and refurbishment at the 100-year-old lido, which is listed as a grade II building by English Heritage.
As in many meetings about the lido over the years, complaints about cleaning and broken equipment were heard at the meeting. One audience member said poolside saunas “looked as though they had been shoplifted from Tesco”.
Rogers said failure to reach agreement with the bank was also the reason why Fusion Lifestyle is nearly a year late in filing its accounts.
Despite this issue, there had been more investment in cleaning, he said.
Rogers said there had been increases in income, but also increases in expenditure. “We have a surplus this year of £751,000 for the 12 months from April ’24 to March ’25”.
Rogers’ openness was welcomed by Mark Meryon, chair of the Lido Steering Committee.
Meryon thanked Rogers and other Fusion staff for being “very candid”. That had enabled the meeting “to have a very grown up, measured debate about what’s going on and what may need to happen,” he said.
“It’s a sorry situation, but we just need to face it head on and deal with it and work together to make Lido a success in the future.”
Ben Longman also thanked lido staff, including general manager Scarlett Hayward, for their hard work.
He said the latest annual BLU user survey, with §50 respondents, had, once again, found considerable dissatisfaction with cleanliness, with maintenance, and with fixes and replacements that were talked about but which did not appear.
“To put that in context,” he said, “I went back and looked at when we were talking about the replacement of the gym equipment.
“The schedule was originally for that to be in place in, in April, and here we are in November and it’s not. I accept that there are reasons why that is – but that is the reality.”
Longman said that over the past 12 months the user group had spent a huge amount of time lobbying, arguing, speaking, and writing to Fusion and Lambeth council and, in one case, to the media, to find a way to resolve what he thought might not be resolvable.
“My conclusion is that Fusion currently doesn’t have the ability to run this site properly. I think we need to acknowledge this.
“It’s a very popular site. It generates a lot of revenue and we can see it deteriorating in plain sight.
“The concern that we have is that the revenues that are raised here, significant revenues, are being used at the expense of the fabric of the site, the customers, and staff, for other means.”
Longman said he could spend time discussing things like cleaning and equipment and maintenance and unmet customer expectation.
“But I’d actually rather use my time to discuss what comes next and what needs to happen next and give you a window on what BLU are doing. We’ve asked Lambeth council to prepare and share with us a continuity plan.
“I want to be clear here. As an organisation, we are sounding an alarm.
“I believe that, the longer this situation continues, the greater the cost and the time needed to fix it.
“If we’re having issues with things like cleaning, we also know that there are more substantial capital expenditure requirements that aren’t taking place, and my concern is that Brockwell Lido faces an extended period of closure, if and when the time comes for another operator to run this site.
“It has suffered years of underinvestment, and my view is that the cleaning and broken equipment is the canary in the coal mine.
“So I’m using this platform to ask for a step change. We need a new way of doing things”, that could be a new operator.
“We can’t keep having meetings like this every year where it’s very clear that there are quite valid needs from users and, and things that need answers,” Longman said.
Meryon agreed, saying: “this has been a year of broken promises”.
BLU is examining the possibility of becoming a charity so that it can raise money and accept donations – something neither Fusion, nor the council, can do.
Introducing Simon Harris, Lambeth council’s leisure services manager, Meryon thanked him for the “huge amount of his time, often outside working hours” he had contributed to help Lido users during the past year.
He also expressed his serious concerns about Fusion, saying: “In my view – as Ben has said – we need to start accepting the reality of this situation, and whilst I very much hope that Fusion can turn things around in the next two weeks, bearing in mind all the promises we’ve had in the last year, I’m not going to be holding my breath. We need to start planning for the possibility of a post-Fusion Lido”.
Harris said that Fusion has a complex lease with the council which runs until May 2031, so there were unlikely to be any “quick wins” in the near future.
Donatus Anyanwu, council cabinet member for stronger communities, leisure and sport, welcomed BLU’s plans and proposals, saying that, if the council needed to step in “my assurance is we will”.
Local MP Helen Hayes, a lido swimmer for 30 years, asked for clarification and more details from Fusion about the outstanding loan and from the council about its continuity pan for the lido in view of the risks Fusion faces.
Both Fusion and users’ representatives appeared fairly confident that – given the level of surplus that the lido generates – a buyer for it is likely to come forward if Fusion faces further difficulties.
