A tweet from the Environment Agency reminds us that this Sunday is the annual full closure of the Thames Barrier (timings as per the poster below). It’s well worth seeing the barrier test in action, particularly if you’ve not seen it before, and there’s usually a bit of a crowd there to witness it.
UPDATE 30TH SEPTEMBER, 2013:
Our campaign against changing the name of Charlton Lido to ‘Royal Greenwich Lido, Charlton’ continues to show real results. The News Shopper reports that a GLL spokeswoman has suggested that residents write to GLL using the mail address lidoname@gll.org to suggest the name of the revamped facility, and confirmed that GLL’s preferred name is still ‘Charlton Leisure Centre and Lido’
Please consider writing to GLL with your preferred name – and let us know in the comments below what you’ve told them!
UPDATE 27th SEPTEMBER, 2013: Nearly a week in, and our campaign has gained more coverage than we had thought possible – thanks to everyone who’s signed the petition, RT’d our tweets, contacted the local press and councillors, and encouraged us along the way. It’s worth summarising some of the support we have as of today:
Some press coverage from this week:
And some highlights from Twitter:
Well done Greenwich Leisure Ltd for agreeing to consult local people over the name of the Lido in Hornfair Park.
— Clive Efford (@CliveEfford) September 26, 2013
.@CharltonCSE7 Thanks – just signed the Charlton Lido petition http://t.co/UraDa9J9sc Seems you’re getting GLL moving in right direction…
— Kevin Bonavia (@kevinbonavia) September 24, 2013
Please help Charlton Lido to retain their name http://t.co/VANs6juKSY
— Brockwell Lido Users (@BrockwellLido) September 24, 2013
To repeat our message from earlier in the week, though, the decision’s not been finalised yet, so please: sign the petition, pass it on; and let us know what you think of GLL’s new proposal in the comments below Mr Sesnan’s.
UPDATE 24th SEPTEMBER 2013: Mark Sesnan, MD of GLL, has left this comment in our original post about the plans to rename Charlton Lido:
Dear Charlton Champion,
I am pleased to be able to inform your readers that GLL has discussed the naming of the Lido further with the Council and we have agreed that there needs to be more consultation as to what is the best name for the new facility.
GLL’s preference is now ‘Charlton Leisure Centre and Lido’, thus retaining Charlton in the name, but being clear that it is ‘more than’ just a Lido, but we are happy to hear other suggestions, however, as the owners and the people making the millions of pounds of investment and the organisation that actually has responsibility to make it work, GLL will of course make the final call on the name.
We very much appreciate the level of local interest in the Lido and hope that this will be reflected in patronage when we are fully up and running.
As soon as we have the relevant information we will let you know the plans for opening the new facilities in the new year and what date the pools will be back up and running in the Spring. Meantime, the pool will stay open until the end of October half term and a timetable leaflet is available at the Lido or on the web. Kids for £1 will run throughout this period.
Lets all look forward to a Charlton success story (in the Royal Borough of Greenwich – of course!).
Mark
Mark Sesnan
Managing Director
GLL (Greenwich Leisure Limited)
Many thanks to all who have supported our campaign asking GLL and Royal Borough of Greenwich to rethink their lido renaming plans – those who’ve signed the petition, RT’d our Twitter feed, spoken to their councillors, and so on – it’s clearly an issue that’s provoked strong feelings in SE7 and beyond. The decision’s not been finalised yet, though, so please: sign the petition, pass it on; and let us know what you think of GLL’s new proposal in the comments below Mr Sesnan’s.
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Let’s tell the Royal Borough of Greenwich and GLL that our lido’s called Charlton Lido
As covered on this site recently, GLL plan to re-name our local lido as “Royal Greenwich Lido, Charlton”. We polled our readers and found over 75% rejected this new name; many commenters raised passionate objections to the idea and the way that GLL have pushed it without any local consultation.
Our new petition asks GLL and our councillors to reconsider: wecallitcharltonlido.co.uk.
Please sign it – and share it with your friends, family, and colleagues. Even if you’re not a lido user you might want to raise an objection to this loss of local identity (and who know what else our royal-obsessed council wants to rebrand next?).
We’ve seen from the success of the campaign to get a pedestrian crossing for Windrush School that this kind of campaign can have an impact – please give up a minute of your time to sign today!
UPDATE 22nd SEPTEMBER 2013
With over 100 signatories in the first 24 hours since launch – and backing from representatives of all the main local political parties – it’s clear that the name change is very unpopular. The petition will be presented to the next full council meeting on October 30th. As well as signing the petition, you can help this campaign by asking a question at the council meeting; more details on how to do this are here.
Some of the comments left by people who’ve already signed:
Some feedback on Twitter:
Community that don’t want their identity subsumed | GLL: It’s called Charlton Lido because it’s in Charlton! http://t.co/GsuOhrsFxY
— Steve Chambers (@respros) September 22, 2013
What’s in a name? Quite a lot. Support the campaign to keep Charlton in Charlton lido http://t.co/4XLTLMkkH8 @NikkiCoates @darryl1974 — Hither Green (@HGweek) September 22, 2013
The incessant vanity rebranding of local landmarks by @Royal_Greenwich needs to stop http://t.co/WdgqTUHUOZ — Steve Eustice (@SteveEustice) September 22, 2013
Maybe you don’t care about pools. Sign anyway, cos local pride’s important. http://t.co/hK45vm4zRp pic.twitter.com/pkxitjEDa0
— Nikki Coates (@NikkiCoates) September 22, 2013
It’s not only in football (#CardiffCity, #Hullcity) that folk are getting fed up with rebranding. #Charlton #Lido https://t.co/GU0nKziNYL
— Simon Inglis (@The_SimonInglis) September 22, 2013
Following some vigorous discussion in recent posts about our lido potentially being renamed, and closing early for winter, the idea of forming a ‘Friends of Charlton Lido’ group has been mentioned and seems worthy of further investigation.
I thought it was worth floating the idea here first as a way of finding out if there’s sufficient interest; if there is, we’ll move things on and set up a public meeting to discuss it further.
A quick look at the website of Brockwell Lido Users Group shows what’s happening elsewhere – and highlights what’s not happening at Charlton at the moment.
Some questions to think about:
Some possible Friends group objectives for discussion:
At the very least a Friends group could exist to gather feedback which would help GLL understand users’ likes and dislikes.
While a Friends group would sit independently of the Charlton Champion, it’s anticipated that the Champion would be a good platform to publicise it.
So what next?
A useful start would be a virtual show of hands: let us know in the comments below, on Twitter or by email (at neilclasper [at] gmail.com) if you think this is a good idea (don’t worry, this doesn’t amount to a commitment to get involved – though any willing volunteers would be extremely welcome!). And if you have ideas, advice, experience, or similar, then we’d love to hear from you. If there’s sufficient interest, we’ll draft some outline aims and objectives, follow up contacts at other lidos’ groups, then set up a public meeting to discuss the whole thing further.
There’s a Halloween Ball at Charlton House on Saturday 26th October in aid of Greenwich and Maidstone Samaritans.
Tickets are £30 and are available from Charlton House.
There’s only one SE7 property in this year’s Open House London event: Charlton House will be opening its doors for tours on Sunday 22nd September. Areas open to the public will include the Minstrel Hall, Long Gallery, Grand Salon, White Room, Newton, Prince Henry & Dutch Rooms, Old Library, and the grounds. It will be open 10am-4pm, and entry is free.
Full information (including a detailed factsheet about Charlton House’s history and features) is on the Open House London website here.
UPDATE St. Luke’s Church will also be open 10am-4pm on Saturday and Sunday.
Lower-than-expected take-up of membership means Charlton Lido will close for the winter on Sunday November 3rd. In an email to Better Swim members, GLL explains that to-date it only has 144 members, where the equivalent scheme for London Fields Lido has 1,200 members. The lack of revenue from this scheme, plus the expectation that the “dryside” facilities will not start making a financial contribution until into 2014, mean they face “a significant financial problem keeping the pool open through the winter“.
Members will have the choice of suspending their membership until the pool reopens, or keeping it running for the other pools run by GLL.
The email lays out some of the costs of running the lido (£200-£500 a day to heat the pool in winter; 1000+ members required to make winter opening viable), and stresses the investment GLL has in making it a success: “We are hopeful that with the whole new complex ‘Royal Greenwich Lido, Charlton’ [sic] up and running next year we will be able to attract the necessary numbers to stay open all year round. GLL will have invested £4m of our money and £1m of Partners money by the time the scheme is finished, so we do need to make it work!”.
(As an aside, if you’ve not had your say on the renaming of the lido yet, you can vote here).
While the lido has clearly been much busier this year than last (thanks, presumably, to the improved weather, plus increased awareness of the pool), it would be interesting to know why take up of the membership has been so low. Are you a member? Have you considered it but decided against? Let us know why in the comments below.
(2nd aside: the lido is now closing at 7pm on weekdays, rather than 8pm as it was through July and August).
An update and some dates for your diary from Charlton Community Gardens:
Autumn is just around the corner and our plans are turning to the next stage of the Charlton Station garden. In September we will have two clearing Sundays, followed by installation and planting of two more raised beds and planting a wildlife friendly area.
We look forward to gardening with many of our waterers and gardeners on the next two clearance days:
Please wear stout shoes, bring gardening gloves and garden forks, spades and loppers, if you have them. Don’t hesitate to come along without gloves and tools, though – as we have some to lend.
More news to follow on the raised beds and planting session(s).
The Charlton Champion 