Another week of lots of emails from residents, this time upset about the proposed closure of Temple Cowley Pools. And quite rightly so too. I have been campaigning against its closure since 2006 and got a lot of signatures on my petition on 2009 when I was standing for the East Oxford Division county seat with Ben Armstrong.
Temple Cowley area has had masses of new residential development in the last 10 years and as such a good local facility like Temple Cowley Pools is absolutely vital. Putting it in Blackbird Leys just will not work as many people don’t have access to cars and even if they do we already have a bad traffic problem in Cowley on Oxford Road and Cowley Road. The current site is safe for hundreds of families and children (many of whom are social tenants and living in relative poverty) to get to either on foot or by bike. I personally have enjoyed being a user of Temple Cowley Pools since 1989 when I first arrived in Oxford.
I don’t object to replacing Temple Cowley Pools with a new facility but am very clear that it MUST be within 1/4 mile of the existing site if it is to continue to provide essential services for the local community. The site of the current post office sorting office on the corner of Hollow Way and Garsington Road springs to mind. But I don’t really see what’s wrong with the current site. Closing yet another local facility off Temple Road and building YET MORE housing surely can’t be a good thing. Temple Cowley Pools are also extremely close to many bus routes and so easy to get to for thousands of Oxford residents.
The real problem is the council’s continued lack of investment and neglect of Temple Cowley Pools. The consultation they are doing is also an utter farce. The questionnaire is extremely loaded and lots of people have complained to me about that too. The consultation is a farce in my opinion.
I am appalled at what the ruling group of the City Council is doing and even more appalled at the apparent silence from the two ward councillors, both Labour members, in Cowley Marsh. Neither of them lives near Temple Cowley Pools as their addresses (Malik and Abbasi) on the Council website will show.
In no particular order, and just a train-of-thought really.
1) One of the reasons we moved to Cowley area was because of the facilities in the area, including TCP and Library.
2) These facilities add value to my property. Removing them to build more housing will reduce market value.
3) I am a trained architect who specialises in architectural visualisation. Low cost housing projects already built in this (and other) area(s) are typically of low design quality and do not relate well to the existing context. The housing to the back of my property and where the school was are testement to that.
4) Related to 3) above, the scale and proportion of anything likely to be built is out of kilter with what presently exists in the area and also out of kilter with what sets the ambience of the Temple Cowley area. Of course, this is purely based upon(valid)asumptions of projects past.
5) Relocating and combining the facilities of TCP with another site further out of town is a ‘supermarket mentality’ that removes the beating heart from a community. Large supermarkets are the prime cause for smaller shops (and their local areas) to fail. This same trend will happen with larger out of town facilities: the immediate community is less likely to use facilities that are further away and therefore the community will begin to stagnate.
6) Smaller facilities, like TCP, cater for the needs and demands of the local community. Larger, out of town facilities will not.
7) Architecturally, the TCP and nearby library are interesting, substantial, significant buildings. They offer a strong foundation to the immediate community that more repetetive non-descript architectural design associated with low-cost housing (as in points 3) and 4) above) will not.
8) A refurbishment is far more environmentally sensitive.
9) There is a huge design opportunity with a refurbishment of what exists.
10) Architects and designers are generally more interested in designing public buildings than social, low-cost housing. This will typically yield better, long lasting results that will knit the community together.