£100,000 extra to repair fire damage to baths
MOSELEY Road Baths, in Balsall Heath, was also recently awarded a £100,000 grant from the government’s Culture Recovery Fund towards urgent repairs to parts of the building damaged in a fire in the 1990s.
A hidden section of the grade-II listed swimming baths in Birmingham will now be brought back into use for the first time in 40 years.
The £100,000 is from a separate pot to the £15.5 million announced by the Chancellor in his Budget.
The Edwardian swimming baths are the oldest of only three grade-II listed pools still in use in Britain and has been on Historic England’s Heritage at
Risk register since 2005. Now run by the local community, it is one of 142 heritage sites to receive a share of a £35 million funding pot designed to bring precious sites back to life.
The money will pay for repair works to a fire-damaged upstairs caretakers’ flat and boardroom to bring them back into use as a community space.
Kat Pearson, trustee at the Moseley Road Baths Charitable Incorporated Organisation, which helped to save the pools from closure, said: “We’re thrilled. Historic England has been a great partner of ours over the years and it’s great that they are finding more money for us.
“Part of our building needs work to make sure it is secure. We have an upstairs caretakers flat and boardroom which have been out of public access for about 40 years which are in quite poor repair. There was a fire at some point in the 90s and we need to make them water tight to make it a space that we can use.
“We don’t have firm plans for them yet but we have been doing art exhibitions and displays and yoga around the building so this is just more space that can be used by the community.”
Any leftover funds will go towards examining the state of the front of the building to identify any repairs.