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Labour Drowning not Swimming
September 4, 2008 10:00 AM
Stockwell Park School will be rebuilt without its Swimming Pool after Labour went back on their promises
Muddle and confusion lies at the heart of Labour's national and local policies with regard to swimming provision at schools currently being redeveloped as part of the Government's Building Schools for the Future programme.
An article in the London Evening Standard draws attention to the situation at Stockwell Park school where an existing and recently improved swimming pool has been swept away in Labour's political tsunami to build new buildings for an expanded educational campus.
Lambeth said at the time of the Planning Approval that there was no money available under the BSF funding regime for a swimming pool at Stockwell Park. The Government agency Partnership for Schools says that local authorities can use funds to build new pools but adds that it is a "local decision" for councils.
Meanwhile future pupils in the Stockwell area will find their brand new school deficient of a vital health and sporting facility which was once such a feature of the old school. Indeed swimming - a sport in which the country excelled at the recent Olympic Games in Beijing - rapidly faces becoming an endangered species in Lambeth with Clapham and Streatham Public Baths also earmarked for closure.
Cllr Roger Giess, Lib Dem spokesperson for children & young people, said, "This is a complete Labour fiasco. Children in Stockwell were promised they could keep their swimming pool but now Labour have gone back on their word."
Cllr Giess added, "According to the Amateur Swimming Association over half of these new BSF schools will lack swimming facilities. Labour ministers promote swimming as one of the healthiest activities for teenagers on the one hand, want them trained to be the swimming gold medallists of the future, while actually closing swimming pools locally. Labour Lambeth doesn't even score bronze here."