Council re-engages with Lido User Group but major issues remain

Council re-engages with Lido User Group but major issues remain

Tuesday 17 March 2026

Meetings with Haringey Council have resumed 

Meetings between ourselves (Park Road Lido User Group — PRLUG) and Haringey Council (who own and operate the lido) have finally resumed, after a 6 month hiatus during which the centre’s senior management team was in effect absent.

At the first meeting in early February, we met Haringey’s new Assistant Area Manager For Leisure, who has 20-plus years of experience with Better (operator of London Fields Lido), and Head Of Active Wellbeing, who has significant operational experience within Haringey. We were pleased to meet the new recruits and encouraged by their range of experience and commitment to meet PRLUG regularly.

We summarised feedback we’d received from lido users on Haringey’s management since they took over from Fusion in October 2024. Overall, the view was that there’d been an improvement but that progress had been slow with many basic issues still unresolved.

We highlighted communication (with potential and current users, and among staff); essential pool maintenance (water temperature and cover use, water level, floor cleaning, filter maintenance); maintenance of basic facilities (indoor female toilets and showers, outdoor showers, accessible shower room, leaking roof, lane marker boards, tidiness of pool surrounds, clock), opening hours (when would hours be extended, are they recruiting to ensure they can staff full daylight hours, commitment to publish lido opening hours for the whole year); and staff wellbeing (resolution of long overdue contract harmonization process; lifeguard shelters and adequate all-weather clothing).

In a positive follow-up meeting in early March, the centre’s two Assistant Managers took us through most of the points we’d raised and the actions that had followed, including the following.

• The refurbished health suite (sauna & steam room) is now open (apparently an app notification was sent out to let members know, although we’ve yet to come across anyone who got one.) Booking is essential — you’ll need a coloured wristband from reception for your timed slot. (The app seems to want to charge everyone £9.95 to use the Health Suite, even though for many it should be included in your current membership. Check with reception if in doubt.)

• The covers are being used regularly and the lido heat exchanger has been repaired. Water temperatures have been stable since.

• A temporary clock is up, and a more suitable, much larger clock is coming.

• Contractors have cleared the blockages that have left most of the female indoor toilets out of action for months. Two cubicles remain out of action awaiting the replacement of a broken toilet unit.

• Plant room re-training is underway, with new processes in place to ensure consistency and regularity — we should see more consistent water levels and clarity.

• The pool vac supplier inspected the unit on site — it will be sent away for repair soon.

• Weekday hours were extended from 08:00–16:00 to 07:30–16:30.

• A skip will be used to clear away large discarded items from the site.

• The smoke detector in the outdoor accessible shower has been swapped for a heat detector which should reduce false alarms; the leaking shower head has been fixed.

• A Poolpod has been approved to improve disabled access directly into the water and is expected to be installed in May.

• Contract harmonization (bringing staff still on Fusion contracts onto Haringey contracts with improved terms) is finally progressing, with all those affected receiving letters detailing how it will affect them.

• The team will contact the manufacturer of the London Fields lifeguard shelters to explore their use at Park Road.

Overall we were encouraged by the team’s determination to address the issues we’ve raised and by progress so far — more than we’d seen in a single month for a very long time.

But it wasn’t all good news.

We were concerned that the Leisure team appear to have given up being able to keep the centre’s website fully up to date on lido opening hours, for example — saying it’s just too complicated. We’ll revisit the centre’s lack of communication next time.

We also highlighted our concerns with the replacement without notice of all the token-based outdoor lockers with (cheaper to maintain) padlock versions, chiefly the issue they’ll cause during the summer peak when occasional visitors turn up without padlocks.

But our biggest concerns currently are mandatory changes to memberships & increase in fees and being limited to mid-winter opening hours despite being well into spring.

Read more about these current major issues and make your views known.