Saved by the community: What’s next for Bristol’s Jubilee Pool

After five years of campaigning, fundraising and hard work by the volunteer group, ​​The Friends of Jubilee Pool have been awarded a Community Asset Transfer of Jubilee Pool and will take control of the community pool on 30th September 2022.

With more hard work in-store to get everything in line between now and September, we sit down for a chat with the Chair of the Group Jules Laming to hear more about the journey.

The Jubilee Pool, situated on Jubilee Road in Knowle has been open since 1937 and, although it functions at the heart of the local community, has been in jeopardy of closing for much of its later life.

It has been threatened with closure three times in eight years, so the Friends of Jubilee Pool group set about campaigning to bring it under community ownership and save it once and for all.

Now, with Bristol City Council having confirmed a community asset transfer that will see responsibility for the pool go to the community group, they are getting ready to welcome this new era with open arms.

But what is so important about the community pool? “It has served the community for over 85 years and has always been here as the fabric of this part of south Bristol and it’s a well-loved, extremely well-used community facility,” smiles Ms Laming.

“It’s a place that’s not just about going to learn to swim. People use it for their physical and mental health, kids learn to swim, and great-grandparents are swimming with their great-grandchildren after learning to swim there themselves in the 1940s.

“It’s friendly, welcoming and everyone knows each other. It’s about the social relationships that bond people together there.”

Ms Laming goes on to tell me how it’s also so much more than somewhere for people to simply swim - it goes much deeper than that, too.  “It’s about being a safe haven for people who are recovering for PTSD and sexual assault and it’s a place for disabled people to swim as well,” she says.

“Because of its warmer waters, it’s a pool that is recommended by the NHS Pain Clinic for recuperative physiotherapy.

“It’s a pool that is there for so many different people for so many different reasons and is the glue that binds us all together in this part of the city, perhaps because it is at the heart of a densely populated residential area. It has huge benefits for the community in so many ways that isn’t about money.”

It’s hard to understand why it has been in jeopardy for most of its life when it exists so solidly at the heart of the community.

Ms Laming explains how the council needed it and wanted it to close due to wanting the users to transfer to Hengrove and use the facilities there. The latest campaign kicked off after Covid-19 when the Mayor decided not to open the pool post-pandemic.

It caused a huge outcry because people were so desperate to get back in the pool so the campaign was launched to get it open and it was then that the Group realised they had to take it on through a Community Asset Transfer Process.

The council has now agreed the business plan subject to some additional information they need.

“It is such an exciting thing and we’ve worked so hard to meet the council’s very tight timetable for the Community Asset Process,” says Ms Laming.

“We’ve had amazing financial and emotional support from the local community who have continued to use the pool, and to stick with their memberships and supported us through a 24-hour Jubilee-athon where raised in excess of £35,000”.

The community has proved that it is well-loved, viable and profitable. Clearly, it means a lot to people.

“I went swimming yesterday lunchtime and one older lady who has been swimming there for 35 years says she started crying when she heard the news that the pool was finally safe and that she didn’t have to worry about it anymore,” smiles Ms Laming.

“There is such a huge love for it and a demand for it. It’s an incredibly important achievement.”

So, what happens next? “We have an agreement in principle so we have three months in which to finalise the contract with the council and have a huge amount of work to do to get everything in place,” Ms Laming explains.

“There is a phenomenal amount of physical work to do as there haven’t been any investments in repair or maintenance since 2012. So we need to get a handle on schedules of work and timescales, so running in conjunction of that is a huge fundraising endeavour.”

But Friends of Jubilee Pool are enthusiastic and positive, despite the challenges. “It’s challenging, but persistence overcomes resistance and we’ve got this far and will get to the end point of taking the keys from the council,” says Ms Laming.

“It’s not going to be easy with the cost of living crisis and escalating costs, but we will do our very best to secure the future for this generation and future generations.”