Edwardian baths saved from closure riding wave of success
JUST OVER four years ago, the Grade II-listed Bramley Baths – the only remaining Edwardian bath house in Leeds – was earmarked for closure by Leeds City Council on the grounds it was not making enough money. But some members of the local community refused to accept the baths, built in 1904, would just be abandoned, boarded up or turned into a branch of Tesco, and former Leeds West Labour MP John Battle was at the centre of that movement.
Now, almost five years on, the baths is in profit, making over £60,000 last year and the management team are doing such a good job, Leeds City Council has just granted them a new 50 year lease.
“It means we can begin applying for Lottery grants,” explains John, 66, who despite retiring in 2010, has never been busier. “We have a new lease for another 50 years, which means it’s well run, financially sound, but we need to raise big money to do up the building. I don’t want it to end up a ruin and then have to rebuild it, we need a programme of steadily renewal and repair.”
They have plans to replace the glass roof, the boiler, to upgrade the changing rooms and showers, all of which should help keep it at the centre of community life. But their success has also drawn envious gazes from other councils. “I just came back from Shrewsbury, where they have 14 swimming pools, they wanted to know how we did it. There’s so much interest in us, in fact, we are thinking of holding a conference next year and inviting everyone to come to us. What we’ve done here is begin not with the building but the people, who I cannot praise enough for their imagination and enthusiasm.
“If it had been boarded up, that would have sent a message to the community, that the public sector is pulling out. At the same time, you are sucking some of the creative life out of the community and yet you can turn that inside out and that’s exactly what we’ve done.
“It used to open from 9.30am-2pm, now it opens 7am-9pm, we have no more hours left in the day. I’ve been joking we’re going to build an extension upwards.”
In keeping with their unusual approach to social enterprise, they have just staged their latest annual general meeting, which they held in the pool (that is, in the water). “It’s totally mad,” admits John. “We get all the paperwork done and then we go in the pool; it’s a dynamic AGM, our annual report is pictures of people having a good time.”
But he adds: “All the background facts and figures are there, we are really strong on safeguarding, good practise is drummed into everyone, we have to be better than any other organisation because of the dangers involved with water, we not amateurs playing at it but at the same time as following all the rules and regulations, you have to find a way so they don’t crush people’s spirit.
“Bramley Baths has been the most rewarding project I have been involved in throughout my whole career, we have a brilliantly committed board of volunteers that works well together.
“The key to anything is whether you can form working relationships. I’m a great fan of Samuel Beckett, who said his favourite word was ‘perhaps’, which was all about possibilities. My favourite is ‘encourage’. We use too much criticism in a negative way today, I’m not prepared to write anyone off. Projects like Bramley Baths come from the people, I’m a big fan of localising and regionalising services and ploughing the money back in, rather than to some man in Berkshire so he can ride round in a big car. What we did with the baths, you could do for a care home or any other public service, you just need to find the people to run it, like we have.
“Bramley Baths has proved it works and people are now interested in how we did it.”