GLL announced today that the refurbished Charlton Lido will be called ‘Charlton Lido and Lifestyle Club’, dropping plans to rename it as ‘Royal Greenwich Lido’. The ‘Lifestyle Club’ addition to the name refers to the gym and cafe facilities due to open in January 2014.
The message sent to Lido members this afternoon:
A common theme that came through in your feedback was the important place that the Lido has within the local Charlton community as well as its historical significance.
We have invested over £5 million so far refurbishing and extending the facilities and are committed to securing the Lido’s future as a local landmark and community facility for years to come.
In response to your comments the name we have chosen, Charlton Lido and Lifestyle Club, recognises the historical and community aspects of the Lido while incorporating the exciting developments to come. The new gym facilities will launch in mid January, with the pool re-opening in Spring.
We will be holding a series of open weekends in late January to give everyone the opportunity to see the new facility first hand. For the latest updates, visit www.better.org.uk/charltonlido or email us.
Today’s announcement reflects a victory for the ‘We Call It Charlton Lido’ campaign, set up after GLL started to rename the lido without any local consultation. An online petition gathered nearly 500 signatures, plus support from across the local political parties, and gained considerable coverage from local media.
This site would like to thank all those who supported the campaign!
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:
Clive Efford, MP for Eltham and Shadow Minister for Sport tweeted to praise GLL for rethinking the decision (see below)
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.
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
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?).
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
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:
How would a Friends group engage with GLL and the council?
What are the overall aims and objectives for the Friends group?
Which of the other London lidos have successful Friends groups (and do we have any contacts there)?
How do we get started?
Some possible Friends group objectives for discussion:
to provide a forum to give GLL user feedback
to represent the interests of users of the lido and related facilities
to help build links between GLL and the local community
to campaign to secure the long term future of the lido in the interests of swimmers.
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.
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).
UPDATE 24th SEPTEMBER 2013: Mark Sesnan, MD of GLL, has left this comment in the thread below:
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.
UPDATE 21st SEPTEMBER: We’ve launched a petition asking GLL and Royal Borough of Greenwich to rethink the renaming: wecallitcharltonlido.co.uk. Please take a moment to sign it!
This week’s Greenwich Time reports that the council is changing the name of Charlton Lido (or Hornfair Lido) to “Royal Greenwich Lido”.
What do you think?
UPDATE: Twitter user @Juptin reports that ‘Royal Greenwich Lido’ signs have started to appear:
Good news for Charlton lido swimmers as GLL announce extended weekday opening hours from this week. The pool will be open 6.45am to 8pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to 5pm on the weekend. This will be especially welcome for those swimmers whose working hours make it otherwise impossible to use the lido during the week. As London temperatures soar, there’s never been a better time to try Charlton’s outdoor pool.
Last week GLL suggested on Twitter that opening hours would be extended once the refurbishment is completed, but was unable to confirm how late they’d be staying open. If you want to swim in the evenings beyond the summer, let them know. If feedback on this site and Twitter is anything to go by, there’s definitely demand for post-work swimming in SE7.
As ever, we’re keen to hear your thoughts on the lido. Four months since its reopened it’d be interesting to get your feedback- let us know in the comments below!
The Charlton Champion 