The case for keeping our community’s beloved Stratford Park Lido open this summer is about much more than swimming. It’s about who our public spaces are for, and what we owe each other as a community.
What we’re really talking about
Stroud’s outdoor pool has been part of this town since 1937, and last summer alone, 30,000 people walked through its gates. It’s been a constant across generations, the Lido, the backdrop to first swims, summer holidays spent without going anywhere, and the kind of chance encounters across the social spectrum that only a truly public space can produce. It’s the kind of place that, once it’s gone, is genuinely difficult to replace.
The campaign to save it has rightly focused on the practical questions: cost, engineering, timeline, and process. These are urgent, and they matter enormously. But there’s a bigger question underneath all of this that deserves to be asked clearly. Who is Stroud’s Lido actually for, and what does losing it mean for the people who need it most?
A question of fairness and equality
There’s a tendency in conversations about outdoor swimming to focus on a particular kind of enthusiast: the early-morning lane swimmer, the cold-water devotee, the person who has made it a central part of their identity. Stroud’s pool serves all of those people, and they matter. But it’s also something much more ordinary, and much more important than that.
It’s somewhere to go on a hot afternoon when you don’t have a garden. Somewhere for children who won’t be going on holiday this summer. Somewhere that costs very little and asks almost nothing of you except to turn up. And for many people in Stroud, it’s one of the only genuinely accessible outdoor spaces available to them during the summer months.
According to research by the Office for National Statistics, one in eight households across Great Britain has no access to a private or shared garden at all. For people in semi-skilled or unskilled work, or who are unemployed, the picture is even starker: they’re almost three times as likely as those in professional or managerial roles to have no outdoor space. These are the people for whom a public lido isn’t a lifestyle choice but, in the most practical sense, the only place available to them when the sun comes out.
It’s also worth naming who we’re actually talking about, because the equality case here is specific and real. Children in low-income families for whom a foreign holiday simply isn’t possible. Older people living alone, for whom the lido is one of the few genuinely social spaces available to them in summer. People without cars, who can’t easily reach the countryside or the coast. People managing their mental health on very little, for whom the cost of private therapy or a gym membership is out of reach, but a swim in the sun is not. Under the Equality Act 2010, public bodies have a legal duty to consider the impact of their decisions on these groups. That duty applies here, and we would ask that it be taken seriously in the weeks ahead.
All this matters. It matters because lidos were built with exactly these people in mind. At their peak in the 1930s, as Future Lidos, the national organisation tracking outdoor pool campaigns across the UK, records, outdoor pools were constructed expressly for working-class communities, as an investment in public health and collective wellbeing at a time of deep economic hardship. Stratford Park Lido opened in 1937 as part of that same tradition, and it was never designed for one kind of person. It was designed to be for everyone. It was designed to help everyone.
The evidence about outdoor swimming
Swimming helps wellbeing. Indeed, the mental health case for outdoor swimming has grown considerably stronger in recent years, and the research is now substantial enough to take seriously. A YouGov poll commissioned by Swim England found that swimming has helped reduce symptoms of anxiety or depression for 1.3 million adults across Britain, and that around 3.3 million British adults with mental health problems swim regularly. Of those regular swimmers, 43% say it makes them feel happier, and 26% say they feel more motivated in their daily lives as a result.
Clinical research backs this up compellingly. A 2022 study carried out by the University of Portsmouth and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, involving 53 participants with varying levels of depression, found that after a short course of outdoor swimming sessions, 81% of participants felt recovered, and 62% showed what researchers described as a reliable improvement in their mental wellbeing. That study has since expanded into a larger NHS-funded clinical trial running across 15 sites in England, and it’s the first of its kind to formally examine the benefits of outdoor swimming specifically for people with depression.
Women’s health and the cost of losing access
If this lido closes, it is women who will feel it most keenly, and the research makes that case clear. The outdoor swimming depression study carried out on the North Devon coast by the University of Portsmouth and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust found that 47 of its 53 participants were women, reflecting a broader pattern in who turns to outdoor swimming for their mental health and who stands to lose most when affordable access disappears.
The Swim England LoveSwimming campaign, which found that swimming has helped reduce symptoms of anxiety or depression for 1.3 million adults in Britain, was explicitly designed to encourage women in particular to embrace the mental health benefits of swimming. And a survey by Better, the UK’s leading leisure operator, found that 37% of the UK population has already stopped swimming regularly because of the cost of living, a figure that will disproportionately fall on women, who remain more likely than men to be in lower-income brackets.
Taken together, what this tells us is straightforward. An affordable outdoor pool in the middle of a town is not a neutral amenity. It is, for many women in Stroud, one of the few genuinely accessible routes to the kind of outdoor exercise and social connection that research consistently shows makes a real difference to mental health and wellbeing. Closing it is not an equality-neutral decision.
Crucial questions must be asked
It’s worth being clear about what has happened with our Lido. And look, we know the council is working within real constraints and doing what they believe is right from their perspective. And at the same time, the community deserves a straight account of how we got here, and asking those questions openly is part of how we move forward together.
The council took back the running of the lido in 2024, and at that point, there was an existing maintenance specification with an estimated cost of £800,000, along with the funds to cover it. The booking system was restrictive, the opening hours were limited, and the pool needed attention, but all of these were solvable problems, and the community was ready to get behind a plan.
Two years later, that money has not been spent, the problems have not been solved, and the council is now saying the cost of the work required has risen to £5 million, making closure the only option. The community deserves a clear explanation of how we arrived at this point, and accountability for those decisions will matter in the long term, whatever happens next.
It’s also worth being clear about what that £5 million figure actually represents, because it’s been a recurring point in this conversation. According to the October 2025 consultant’s report, it’s the cost of a full upgrade, including heating the pool and reducing its depth throughout to match the indoor pool. The lido hasn’t been heated since the Second World War. Papers more recently published suggest “a large part” of the cost increase to £5m was an astronomically expensive top of the range stainless steel pool liner.
None of these upgrades has ever been requested by a well-conducted user survey, nor subject to any democratic scrutiny. They are enhancements, not essential repairs, and conflating the two has caused a great deal of unnecessary alarm.
The Save Our Lido Stroud campaign’s own civil engineer, working alongside Trevor Mogg, an experienced specialist who has restored multiple outdoor pools across the South West, carried out an independent assessment of what the pool actually needs. They concluded that the essential works required to make the pool safe and operational this summer could be done for less than £100,000 and completed in four to five weeks.
The stakes are higher than one summer
The instinct to say, let it close for one season and sort it out properly, is understandable, but the evidence from other lidos across the country suggests it’s a false economy, both practically and emotionally. Once an outdoor pool closes, even temporarily, it becomes dramatically harder to reopen. Regular users form new habits elsewhere, memberships lapse, the political case weakens, and the financial momentum needed to fund restoration becomes much harder to build. Bristol Lido closed and took thirty years to reopen, and when it did, it was at half its original size. Of the more than 300 outdoor pools that existed at their peak, only around 100 remain today, and most of those that closed have stayed closed, according to expert group Future Lids.
It’s also worth noting that we’re swimming with, not against, the national tide here. Across the country, communities are fighting to restore and reopen lidos rather than close them. Hull’s Albert Avenue pool recently underwent a £10.5 million redevelopment in one of the most deprived parts of the city, and as the council leader told local media, for an area where 60% of homes fall within a deprivation category, a lido a short walk or bus ride away is genuinely life-changing. Stroud isn’t Hull, and the scale is different, but the principle is exactly the same: outdoor pools are public health infrastructure, and the communities that have them should do everything they can to keep them.
What we’re asking
All 51 Stroud District councillors will make the vote on 30 April.
We’re asking the Greens, who run Stroud District Council, to use this period to lead with honesty and urgency, to get the right information into the right hands, and to make the decision that keeps this community asset alive for the summer and beyond. We’re asking councillors from the other parties to work with them on this, because it’s genuinely bigger than politics, and the outdoor pool has been everyone’s responsibility across different administrations for a long time.
And we’re asking all 51 councillors to hold in mind, as they weigh up the evidence, that the people who most need the lido are often the people least able to make their voices heard in rooms like those at Ebley Mill. Closing this lido is not an equality-neutral decision. The people who will feel it most are the people who can least afford to lose it.
Stroud has something rare and worth protecting here: an affordable, historic outdoor pool that is genuinely loved and genuinely used by 30,000 people last summer alone. Those people deserve to know that every option has been properly explored before the gate closes.
How you can act before the 30 April vote
The single most powerful thing you can do right now is email your district councillors directly, in your own words, about what the lido means to you and your family. The campaign website at www.savestroudlido.org makes this easy: just enter your postcode, and it brings up a pre-addressed email ready to send. If you’re not sure what to say, the website has plenty of bullet points to draw on, but your own words will always carry more weight.
There also a series of council meetings (open to the public) where your presence will matter – the next one is at Ebley Mill on 16 April at 7pm. See our events page for more details, or just come along.
In the meantime, sharing the campaign on social media, talking to neighbours, and helping to display posters across the district all make a real difference. You can collect from Made in Stroud on Kendrick Street, download from the campaign website, or pick up on Stroud High Street on Saturday mornings in April. You can follow and share the campaign on Instagram at www.instagram.com/savestroudsoutdoorpool/ and on Facebook.
A low-traffic WhatsApp group for updates is available to join through the campaign website. If you have specific skills to offer, whether you’re a words person, a people person, technically minded or creatively inclined, the team would love to hear from you at savestroudpool@proton.me.
References
All stats and claims in this article can be verified at the following sources.
One in eight households is without a garden, and class disparity in garden access: Office for National Statistics, “One in eight British households has no garden”, May 2020. Available at ons.gov.uk.
Lidos built for working-class communities, 300 pools at peak, around 100 remaining: Future Lidos, “The Lido Story”. Available at futurelidos.org.
1.3 million adults helped by swimming with anxiety or depression, 3.3 million regular swimmers with mental health problems, wellbeing statistics: YouGov poll commissioned by Swim England, 2018. Available at swimming.org/swimengland.
Clinical outdoor swimming and depression study (81% recovered, 62% reliable improvement): Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and University of Portsmouth, OUTSIDE trial feasibility study, 2022, expanded 2024. Available at sussexpartnership.nhs.uk and port.ac.uk.
£800,000 maintenance fund not spent, £5 million upgrade cost breakdown, council’s commitment to new survey: Save Our Lido Stroud campaign FAQs, citing council documentation and committee meeting minutes, March and April 2026. Available at savestroudlido.org.
Essential works estimate of under £50,000 in four to five weeks: Save Our Lido Stroud campaign, citing independent assessment by SOLS civil engineer and Trevor Mogg, specialist lido restoration engineer, April 2026.
Bristol Lido closure and thirty-year reopening: Save Our Lido Stroud campaign FAQs; Future Lidos, “The Lido Story”. Available at futurelidos.org.