Stroud's beloved Lido is facing closure — What can we do?
Nikki Laine | AmplifyStroud
March 2026
FOR GENERATIONS OF STROUD residents, Stratford Park Lido — or the Outdoor Pool — has been a fixture of summer.
The cold water and that sharp collective intake of breath when you first (bravely) descend into the water. Brrrr. The old diving board we don’t use any more, but looks great. The sound of kids splashing in the heat of the summer, and swimmers' feet flapping in the water as they glide down the lanes.
Now, for the first time in living memory, it might not open. When I heard that, I had to help. I’ve used the Lido for a long time now.
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Last year, it defined my summer. Working on a novel as I was then, I’d run in the morning, edit all day, then swim at 6 pm every evening. The Lido, for me, helped me swim, sure, but it was more than that. It gave me a rhythm to my day, brought me laughter and chat with friends I met there after a long day of solitude.
It made me feel refreshed, alive and, most importantly, connected to my community. I was so thankful. And now, with the thought of it closing, it’s time for me to give something back. To help the Lido as it’s helped me.
The need for protecting and increasing our access to "Blue spaces" — with all of their mental health and physical activity benefits has never been greater - especially with the increased risk to wild swimmers and seaside visitors from the UKs appalling water industry failures.
How did we get here?
STRATFORD PARK AND ITS LIDO have been in public hands since 1935, when Stroud Urban District Council took over what had been a private pleasure ground and opened it to everyone.
Two years later, the council built the outdoor pool, which opened in 1938 at a cost of around £20,000. Designed by the council's own engineer, FS Cutler, it was an ambitious piece of civic investment: a 55-yard spring-fed lido with a striking parabolic diving board, an Art Deco fountain and changing facilities. It was part of a national wave of inter-war lido-building, a democratic movement to give working people access to outdoor swimming and leisure.
The Lido is genuinely remarkable as a piece of surviving heritage. The diving platform is one of only four inter-war concrete diving platforms still standing in England, and it now holds Grade II listed status, recognised by Historic England. The wider site sits within the Stratford Park Conservation Area.
For almost a decade, the Friends of Stratford Park Lido have worked to advocate for its future, securing the heritage listing, running community consultations and working with Stroud District Council (SDC) on plans for improvement.
By 2025, the council had committed £900,000 in improvements, with talk of heating the pool to extend the season. Around 2,000 residents took part in consultations.
The momentum felt real.
A five million pound shock
THEN CAME THE RESULTS of new, more detailed condition surveys, and the picture changed completely.
The surveys have found that the Lido now requires an estimated £5 million investment in essential structural and mechanical works. Critically, because of how the systems are interconnected, the Council says that the work cannot be phased. It all has to happen at once, or not at all.
Questions are being asked by members of the community about the specific breakdown of the costs and the need for such tight scheduling of works.
The headline is that the Lido will not open this summer.
And with SDC unable to bridge a gap of that size, the District Council has been clear that the Lido's visitor numbers alone could not service a loan of that scale, so its future beyond this year is genuinely in doubt.
SDC has stressed this is not a formal, permanent closure. Staff are being redeployed rather than made redundant, and the site is being protected. The Council have said that without a credible funding solution in place, the pool will remain in limbo.
Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) means that Stroud District Council will be abolished in 2028 and it is uncertain whether the larger Strategic Authority that will replace it will be prepared to take on the Lido on as an asset.
Its future needs to be protected now.
Alyssa Pearce
Across Britain, communities have saved their Lidos. Saltdean, Tooting Bec and many others have come back from the brink through determined collective action, heritage funding and community ownership models.
“The lido is a critical community asset, loved and used by generations of people in Stroud. Its future must be secured so everyone can continue to enjoy it.”
— Jess McQuail, Chair of Friends of Stratford Park Lido
Stratford Park Lido has a Grade II listed diving board, it sits within a beautiful park setting, has an organised Friends group and almost ninety years of community love behind it. These are the real assets in a funding application.
The need is for us, as a community, to act, and act now.
Hopeful Towns
IN 2023, HOPE NOT HATE COMMISSIONED a report “Hopeful Towns” - specifically to determine what makes a town inclusive and welcoming.
The report surveyed 862 across England and Wales against a range of metrics to determine the following:
- The extend to which a place is confident, open and optimistic.
- How much the community there is able to adapt to change or absorb shocks
- How much agency residents feel, and how much trust there is likely to be for decision-makers, outsiders and each other
- How positive residents are about racial and cultural difference
- How able the community is to withstand abrupt demographic shifts or one-off flashpoints, without these events escalating
- and, correspondingly, how predisposed a place is to welcome migrants, refugees or other new groups.
Stroud scored well across all criteria, along with Stonehouse, with only the uncertain industrial future and lack of public transport availability being factors that affect how hopeful the places were, compared with other towns across England and Wales.
A key factor in what makes towns resilient is how many "Anchor / heritage institutions" — museums, town halls, pubs, market spaces — there are. These contribute to a shared sense of identity and this is why preserving assets like the Lido is so important.
In a country rendered anonymous by the rollout of identikit shopping spaces and the enclosure of public space, the presence of distinctive, unique and publicly owned heritage spaces is absolutely vital.
When Stroud decides that we really love something, we come together and wrap our arms around it
STROUD HAS A PROUD HISTORY of community resilience.
Stroud is the kind of place that doesn't accept the loss of things that it loves — coming together is what we do best as a community.
When the Heavens Valley, our cherished 102-acre stretch of meadows, ancient woodland and waterfalls on the edge of town, was threatened with sale to private developers in 2024, the community mobilised fast to protect the land.
Ben Challis
Within 13 months, the Heavens Valley Community Benefit Society had raised £850,000 and completed the purchase of Thrupp Farm, thought to be one of the largest community land buyouts in the country.
Before that, the Subscription Rooms and the Oakbrook Community Farm were both brought into public ownership through collective effort and more recently the Trinity Rooms has been raising money for a community buy out.
The lido is the next test of that. It is a different kind of challenge, and the instinct is the same, the one that some things belong to everyone, and it is worth rallying to keep them that way.
Act now: How we can all help
[Editor's note] Some of the information below is specific to the week of 16 March 2026.
THE KEY DECISION POINT is the District Council meeting on Thursday 19 March 2026, but there are other important steps that we can take right now.
On the evening of Monday 16 March, Stroud Town Council (not the decision-making body) heard the strength of feeling from the community. They have indicated they will hold a public meeting about the lido if at least six local residents email them.
Please contact Stroud Town Council, and encourage others to do so, too. If enough people write in, a larger venue may well be required.
More urgently, on Thursday 19 March, the Community, Services and Licensing Committee (CS&L) of Stroud District Council, the body with the authority to make this decision, will meet at 7 pm at Ebley Mill.
There have been no public questions raised because the legal window for submissions closed shortly after the initial announcement was made.
However, any District Councillor sitting on the committee may ask questions on behalf of members of their Ward as a matter of urgency.
Other District Councillors are entitled to attend the meeting but are not permitted to raise questions, however they can work with their colleagues to draw attention to public feeling.
There are three actions that local residents can take immediately:
- Email your District Councillor (see list below), asking them to attend the Community, Services & Licensing Committee meeting and raise your concerns about what the Stratford Park Lido means to the community.
Please copy in the committee chair: [email protected] - Attend the meeting at Ebley Mill on Thursday 19 March. Supporters will gather from 6.30 pm to demonstrate their backing for the Lido as councillors arrive, then go inside for the 7 pm meeting. The press is expected to attend.
— You can view the meeting agenda and reports pack here
— Or watch the meeting here
- Email [email protected] with a single sentence requesting a public meeting about the Lido. Please include your home address. There will be further opportunities to influence decisions in April, and at the same time, it’s really important to make an impact at Thursday's meeting.
District Councillors on Community, Services & Licensing committee
These councillors are entitled to raise urgent questions
- Councillor Martin Brown (Bisley) — Chair
- Councillor James Boyle (Chalford) — Vice-Chair
- Councillor Fraser Dahdouh (Cainscross)
- Councillor Jonathan Edmunds (Randwick, Whiteshill & Ruscombe)
- Councillor Marisa Godfrey (The Stanleys)
- Councillor Ian Hamilton (Cam East)
- Councillor Gill Oxley (Hardwicke)
- Councillor Helen Elliott-Boult (Thrupp)
- Councillor Nigel Prenter (Rodborough)
- Councillor Steve Robinson (Nailsworth)
- Councillor Gill Thomas (Minchinhampton)
- Councillor Paul Turner (Berkeley Vale)
District Councillors representing Stroud
- Councillor Shyama Ananthan (Stroud Farmhill & Paganhill)
- Councillor Cate James-Hodges (Stroud Central)
- Cllr Natalie Rothwell-Warn (Stroud Slade)
- Councillor Lucas Schoemaker (Stroud Trinity)
- Councillor Cath Moore (Stroud Uplands)
- Councillor Martin Baxendale (Stroud Valley)
Thursday's meeting at Ebley Mill is critical. It will set a precedent for the process ahead, and by Stroud doing what it does best and coming together, standing together to stand up for what our community needs, the Lido has a chance of survival.
Stratford Park Lido — the Outdoor Pool, thank you.
We love you. And want you to stay.
For more information, visit www.stroud.gov.uk/Lido or email [email protected]
AMPLIFY STROUD is 100% reader-supported and we can't do this without your help.
Nikki Owen is a multi-award-winning author, book coach and creative-writing lecturer.
She is co-founder of This Ends Now, a non-profit working towards a world free from gender-based oppression, and a mentor for Dialect Writers. Her work explores empathy, belonging and the stories that connect us.
antenna
Amplify Stroud is supported by Dialect rural writers collective. Dialect offers mentorship, encouragement and self-study courses as well as publishing.
You can find out more at https://www.dialect.org.uk/
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