Campaigners compel Exeter City Council to reconsider Northbrook pool closure with 2,250-strong resident petition

Exeter City Council is under pressure to reconsider its plan to close Northbrook Swimming Pool after community campaigners triggered a full council debate on the closure by raising a petition imploring it to keep the pool open that was signed by nearly 2,250 local residents.

As a result it will hold a debate on the pool’s closure at its 10 June meeting at Exeter Guildhall.

At the same time responses to residents’ freedom of information requests have confirmed that the £3.5 million cuts made by the council to its 2025-26 budget included a decision to close the pool that was made without first holding a public consultation or producing an Equalities Impact Assessment.

A failure to fulfil its Public Sector Equality Duty in this way would make the pool closure decision potentially unlawful and leave it open to challenge in the courts.

May’s local elections results and the council’s dependence on financial support from Sport England have also intensified the pressure on it to change course, as months of growing anger led to a demonstration outside its annual meeting last week.

Northbrook Swimming Pool campaigners demonstrate outside Exeter Guildhall on Tuesday during Exeter City Council’s annnual meeting.

When the city council met on 25 February to cut its 2025-26 budget by £3.5 million, all the order paper said about the “adjustment to leisure budgets” proposed by the ruling Labour group was that these cuts would make up £586,000 of the total.

Less than 48 hours later, leisure services staff found themselves reading an email from council director Ian Collinson that had been printed and pinned to the Northbrook pool wall.

It said: “I am writing to inform you of a decision that will impact the leisure service run by Exeter City Council.”

It added: “As part of the council’s ongoing efforts to manage the service with a reduced budget, the decision has been made to manage the closure of Northbrook swimming pool.”

Later that day, a statement for publication on the council’s website was sent to councillors and officers for approval.

It said: “Councillors have agreed an adjustment in the council’s leisure budget which will impact users of Exeter’s Northbrook Swimming Pool.”

It added: “At the budget-setting meeting on 28 February [sic], Council backed a £3.5 million package of measures necessary for the authority to set a balanced budget for the next financial year.

“The measures include a decision to close Northbrook Swimming Pool.”

Duncan Wood, the council executive member who is responsible for the council’s leisure facilities, reacted almost immediately, replying less than an hour later: “This is the first I have time I have heard about this announcement.”

By the end of the day, he had “substantially rewritten” the statement because, he said: “the council has not formally made the decision to close the pool”.

He added: “We need residents to understand the context and crucially [that the closure was] not predetermined. Ultimately they may not agree but they should feel that they had ample opportunity to be heard and that we listened.”

By the time the statement appeared on the council’s website, a fortnight after Ian Collinson’s email to leisure services staff, it had changed again.

It now said: “It’s important to give everyone who uses Northbrook Swimming Pool the opportunity to give their thoughts and opinions in an open way to get a deeper understanding of how any potential closure could impact users.”

This time Ian Collinson’s email, sent to councillors, said: “The decision to close Northbrook Swimming Pool will only be considered after hearing from the community it serves and after assessing the impact of the potential closure on its users.”

Northbrook Swimming Pool. Photo: Exeter City Council.

Halfway through the six-week public consultation on the pool’s closure that the council began on 11 March, Duncan Wood tried to justify what had happened in front of a council scrutiny committee.

He was there to answer questions from committee members and present a report on his executive responsibilities into which most of the public consultation press release had been pasted verbatim.

When asked by Diana Moore why the consultation on the pool’s closure was taking place in March and April after the February budget decision had already been made, he said that the cuts “could” include closure of the pool which he said was a “potential decision which has been indicated by the need to make the savings in the budget”.

Saying: “If not Northbrook, if not there, then where?”, he added that there had been “no intention” to close the pool until he and his executive colleagues assessed where the 2025-26 budget cuts would fall, despite the council confirming that Northbrook was in its sights the previous June.

He also claimed, quoting figures provided by the council to community campaignersan hour before the meeting began, that the pool would need capital investment of at least £2 million to transform it into a modern, energy-efficient facility that complies with all relevant legislation and meets high carbon emissions standards.

Neither he nor the council provided any evidence to back up these figures, or explained why it had concluded that the only investment option for the pool was its near-complete renewal.

He also said that the pool’s running costs had amounted to more than £800,000 over the past three years, apparently unaware that the figures provided by officers covered nearly four years, and said that the income allocated to the pool during the same period came to only £140,000, also unaware that the council had omitted the pool’s school and swimming club income.

He concluded that the pool requires an annual average subsidy of £220,000. In fact, the pool required an average annual subsidy of £165,000 over the period covered by the council’s figures.

At the meeting Duncan Wood also claimed that Northbrook’s maintenance costs had averaged £22,000 each year when, according to the figures provided by council officers, they had actually come to just over £16,700 – although he did admit that so much of the facility would be new were the council to invest in its future that its running costs would be “substantially” lower for years to come.

He also referred to the council’s Northbrook bids to Sport England’s Swimming Pool Support Fund, both of which had failed.

According to the council the first had been submitted in July 2023 for £91,000 for “prevention of closure due to rising utility costs” and the second in October 2023 for nearly £900,000 for “installation of PV panels, LED lighting, replace the gas boiler, triple glaze the pool hall, wall upgrade and repair roof and roof lights”.

He confirmed at the meeting that the council hadn’t met the bid criteria because it had not been committed to keeping the pool open for the following fifteen years – although the council holds a 99-year lease on the building – but he didn’t explain why the second bid had been so much lower than the capital investment he had claimed was necessary to keep the pool open.

He also didn’t place any of Northbrook’s capital investment, maintenance or running cost requirements, or the subsidy it needs as a result, in context by explaining the council’s leisure services finances as a whole.

The council accounts for about three-quarters of its leisure services income by recording a “home” leisure centre for each new member when they sign up then allocating their payments to that leisure centre, even though all (non-spa) memberships confer access to all six centres.

The council says each member “independently” selects their home leisure centre, but its website pre-selects St Sidwell’s Point for each new application despite it being last but one on the list of six.

Once this home leisure centre has been set, leisure services users cannot change it themselves. The council has confirmed that the only way it can be amended is “back of house on the management system” when a member submits a manual request to council staff.

However the council has also confirmed that during the Northbrook closure consultation ordinary leisure services staff have not been permitted to change members’ home leisure centres.

It says any such changes have been “managed” by staff who work directly with Legend, the council’s third-party membership system provider, due to “the sensitivity of the consultation” and to ensure that any changes are “actioned and logged as part of the consultation process”.

As a result, members who have attempted to change their home leisure centre from St Sidwell’s Point to Northbrook during the consultation period have found it difficult to do so.

The council nevertheless says there were 719 council leisure services members with Northbrook registered as their home leisure centre last month. Just shy of 6% of the 12,000 or so members at which council leisure services peak each year before the numbers plummet at the academic year end then rise again each autumn.

In 2022-23, the council subsidised St Sidwell’s Point to the tune of £1.2 million while Northbrook cost it £169,000 – 5.1% of the overall leisure services subsidy of £3.3 million. (Exeter Arena, where the income was less than twice that at Northbrook, required a £522,000 subsidy – three times as much.)

In 2023-24 St Sidwell’s Point cost £900,000 and Northbrook £187,000 while the whole service subsidy came to £2.4 million, so Northbrook cost 7.8% of the total and Exeter Arena still needed two and a half times as much.

At the same time, the council’s leisure centre capital programme came to £465,000 in 2023-24, then rose to £2.25 million in 2024-25 and is set at £1.75 million in 2025-26, with St Sidwell’s Point receiving the lion’s share in all three years and Northbrook a fraction of the total.

In addition, these figures do not include the cost of debt related to the construction of St Sidwell’s Point, which took nearly ten years to complete and eventually cost £45 million, more than twice its original £19.4 million budget.

The council borrowed £36 million towards its construction costs from the Public Works Loan Board in September 2019 on a 50 year annuity basis, of which £33.7 million remained outstanding at the end of last year. It pays a fixed 1.8% interest rate on the loan, equating to just over £600,000 this year.

And while the council once hoped that its leisure services might one day not require a subsidy at all, finance director Dave Hodgson confirmed two years ago that a “detailed analysis and review of the service has identified that this will not be possible”.

A follow-up finance report concluded in June 2023 that all its leisure centres were expected to continue to require subsidies, with the possible exception of St Sidwell’s Point which had “the potential to become cost neutral at year five”.

Duncan Wood, who was by then the leisure services portfolio holder, appeared before a scrutiny committee soon after. After extolling the high proportion of leisure services members who had signed up at St Sidwell’s Point he was asked to explain its £1.2 million 2022-23 subsidy.

His response was that the council was facing service-wide challenges and had to look at leisure services costs as a whole.

Northbrook Swimming Pool, believed to be in the 1920s. Photo: Michael Davey.

Community campaigners who are trying to save Northbrook Swimming Pool from closure accuse the council of cutting the pool’s opening hours to undermine its viability. They also say they have contacted Duncan Wood repeatedly but he has not replied.

An online petition started when the pool’s closure was first announced gathered 925 signatories. When this did not produce a response, residents turned their sights on the city council itself, directly submitting a second petition earlier this month with nearly 2,250 signatories.

It has since been verified by council officers, compelling the council to hold a debate on the pool’s closure which will take place on 10 June.

As if anticipating the limits of the five-minute hearing they will receive, which will be followed by a council members’ debate that is limited to fifteen minutes, they turned up in force for a demonstration outside last week’s annual council meeting, ensuring that no-one inside could be in any doubt about the strength of feeling that the prospect of the pool’s closure has prompted.

The council previously said it would publish a report on the pool closure consultation in July which would give a “clear and accurate representation of what people told us” and “detail exactly how a potential closure would impact the people who use Northbrook Swimming Pool”.

However the leisure services budget cuts it made in February suggest that the council will pay no heed to the consultation results. They followed a 2025-26 budget consultation which found only 30% of respondents agreeing with the council’s proposal to “reduce the subsidy on the six council run leisure facilities”.

47% of the respondents disagreed, in an interviewer-led survey which the council repeatedly said would accurately represent the views of the whole city. More than half of those who voluntarily completed the online version of the survey also disagreed.

Council leader Phil Bialyk then said, in his budget-setting speech: “Extensive consultation has taken place to ensure that our identified priorities match those of our residents and communities as well as those who visit or work in Exeter.

“We have listened and taken account of what residents told us was important to them.”

The council then approved the cuts.

When Michael Mitchell subsequently asked, during last month’s scrutiny committee meeting, where the council might make cuts to offset the cost of keeping Northbrook open, should it reverse its decision, Duncan Wood talked round the question for several minutes but did not answer it.

When pressed, Duncan Wood said, perhaps anticipating the situation at St Sidwell’s Point a fortnight later when it lost its internet connection and suddenly closed: “There is no plan B”.

Pyramids leisure centre demolition nears completion

Northbrook users may yet have reasons to be cheerful. The council has already scheduled a special executive meeting on 24 June to consider the pool’s future. The agenda item is designated as a key decision, implying that the council intends to make significant changes to its existing budget.

At the same time the local Labour party, which still controls the council, will be worried about the pool becoming a defining issue in Mincinglake & Whipton, which was its safest seat until recently. Even more so as it appears set to sell a ransom strip that has been preventing a controversial development of Exeter’s northern hills above Pendragon Road at the other end of the ward.

Although the party will not be defending the seat next May after Tony Payne won a twelve month term for Reform UK in a by-election on 1 May, it will already be expecting to lose to the Greens in Newtown & St Leonard’s in 2026 and will be jittery in Pennsylvania following Liberal Democrat Michael Mitchell’s win there in the recent county council elections.

Because the margin by which newcomer James Cookson held Topsham for Labour in another by-election on 1 May was so tight – 28 votes – Mincinglake & Whipton could become key to the outcome of the 2026 local elections, with Labour retaining control of the council only if it regains the seat.

Meanwhile the council is desperate for £2 million from Sport England towards the redevelopment of Wonford community hub, without which finance for the £7 million project appears to be out of reach, and also depends on Sport England funding to keep Wellbeing Exeter afloat.

Closing Northbrook just as Sport England arrives at a Wonford funding decision will hardly help the council’s case, especially as it intends to sell Grace Road Fields – an ex-playing field in Riverside Valley Park – for redevelopment despite Sport England previously saying it should be used as a sports and recreation hub.

But what the council should be most concerned about is its apparent failure to fulfil its Public Sector Equality Duty by deciding to close the pool without first completing a public consultation or Equality Impact Assessment, as it admitted at the beginning of last month.

It had consulted neither Devon County Council, the local education authority, nor Northbrook Community Trust, the local educational charity which supports disadvantaged children and young people from which the council leases the pool.

Several local schools, all of which are much closer to Northbrook than they are to St Sidwell’s Point, also appear to have been kept in the dark until after the fact. Most notably Ellen Tinkham School, which services children with special educational needs and disabilities and sends many of its pupils to Northbrook to provide them with opportunities to swim.

The decision to scrap the controversial Heavitree & Whipton Active Streets trial ended up turning on a Devon County Council Equality Impact Assessment which identified a disproportionate negative impact on individuals with one or more protected characteristics, notably pupils at Vranch House School, which serves children with complex physical difficulties.

Many of the pupils at Ellen Tinkham School are likely to meet the definition of one or more protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 too.

As government guidance for local authorities on the Public Sector Equality Duty says, decision-makers “should be aware of the potential impacts of a decision” and “must give real consideration to the duty as part of the decision-making process” which “must also be exercised fully, rigorously and with an open mind”.

It reminds councils that “there are no exceptions in the act for routine decisions” nor “in relation to high-level strategic decisions” and that “making decisions without having due regard to the duty can be unlawful”.

Decisions which do not comply with the duty can be challenged in the courts, with the onus on the decision-maker to evidence “what has been done to have due regard to equality, what evidence has been considered, what decisions have been made and why”.

In a prominent case brought in the High Court by the London taxi trade against a Transport for London scheme in Bishopsgate, Mrs Justice Lang found that, even though an Equality Impact Assessment had been performed, it “did not meet the required standard of a ‘rigorous’ and ‘conscientious’ assessment, conducted with an open mind”.

She said, quashing the Transport for London decision, that parts of the assessment were “perfunctory” and added: “Most worryingly of all, the EqIA read as if its purpose was to justify the decision already taken.”

If Exeter City Council did take the decision to close Northbrook Swimming Pool when it cut its 2025-26 leisure services budget on 25 February, as Ian Collinson’s email said and the council’s subsequent unpublished – then hastily rewritten – statement confirmed, it appears to have done so unlawfully without fulfilling its Public Sector Equality Duty.

If it did not, as Duncan Wood then Ian Collinson subsequently claimed, it will now either have to take the decision to close the pool in public in the face of determined and widespread opposition to its plans or come up with a “Plan B” after all.

It will also have to explain where in its leisure services budget the cuts it made on 25 February were intended to fall instead, if they were not intended to fall on Northbrook as council leader Phil Bialyk said at the meeting, then find a way to finance the capital investment that Northbrook needs.