Putney’s 33-metre pool is staying. Wandsworth Council and Places Leisure have dropped the plan to shorten it, after more than 1,450 people signed a petition against the cut.
The council has gone further than dropping the cut. It has promised that any future move to shorten the pool would need public consultation first, the one step the original plan skipped.
The wider refurbishment still goes ahead, but the pool will stay open while it is done. The work is now due to begin this summer, rather than the 1 July first announced, with the changing rooms refurbished in stages so swimmers keep access throughout. No closure or lost summer.
The decision came in a joint statement from the council and Places Leisure, which runs Putney Leisure Centre. The Cabinet Member for Leisure, Ethan Brooks, had met the operator at the centre two days earlier.
The original notice on 2 June, sent to members by email, had said the pool would be permanently shortened, with no consultation. The petition followed within days. Brooks took on the leisure brief only last month, when the Conservatives formed an administration after May’s elections, and inherited the row with it.
Dan Hawtrey, who organised the petition, welcomed the result in an update to supporters but said the campaign was not over. He wrote that the petition “is not going to be enough”, and that he expected the issue to return as a public consultation. He is keeping it open so residents can respond when it does.
His caution matches the wording of the statement itself. The council commits to the pool’s length only “as part of the current plans”, leaving room for the question to return in a future version of the contract. And what the previous Labour administration approved, and why the council will not release the papers, remains unresolved.
For now, the pool keeps its length and the works will not lock swimmers out. The council says more detail on the refurbishment, and on how residents can have their say, will follow at the centre in the coming weeks.
