Lib Dems And Greens Break Martello Lakes Pool Promise

The Liberal Democrats said they’d “immediately start work” on a swimming pool at Martello Lakes. The Greens said the Conservatives could have built one there by now. Three years after the election campaign, the council’s own papers say Martello Lakes isn’t suitable for a swimming pool — and the shiny replacement is padel courts, tennis courts, junior football pitches and a community room.

There are political promises, and then there are political promises that return years later wearing a fake moustache, carrying a clipboard, and calling themselves “further analysis”. Welcome to Martello Lakes, where the pool that once floated through opposition speeches, campaign slogans and anti-Princes Parade arguments has now done a magnificent vanishing act. Not so much “build back better” as “serve, volley, and hope nobody remembers the manifesto”.

The Liberal Democrats’ paper trail is the easiest to follow because, helpfully, they wrote it down in very plain English. In June 2019, their local website reported that Folkestone & Hythe District Council had passed a motion to “Save Princes Parade from development and instead build a new swimming pool and leisure centre at Martello Lakes”. The same report said the motion was proposed by Lib Dem councillor Tim Prater and seconded by former Green councillor Lesley Whybrow.

   

The motion itself was even clearer. It resolved to “immediately take up the option for a Leisure Centre site at Martello Lakes” and bring forward plans “no later than November 2019 to open a new swimming pool and leisure centre there”. Immediately. November 2019. New swimming pool. Leisure centre. There. This wasn’t a misty aspiration whispered to a focus group over a digestive biscuit. It was a formal council motion, pushed by the Lib Dems and seconded by the Greens.

The official minutes also record the inconvenient legal reality. After the vote, the Monitoring Officer advised that the resolution “would not be binding on the Executive” because decisions on withdrawing planning applications and where to site a new leisure facility were executive matters. In other words, the motion was politically loud but legally soft — a rubber sword waved bravely at the castle gates.

But the Lib Dems didn’t leave it there. In February 2023, shortly before the local elections, Cllr Tim Prater wrote: “Given control in May, I’d scrap the project, take the option on the Martello Lake site and immediately start work on a scheme to get a new swimming pool there, at a significantly lower cost and a fraction of the risk.” That is about as close to a pledge as politics gets without a brass band, balloons and someone dressed as a dolphin.

The Greens were more slippery by 2023, which is another way of saying they had fitted an emergency exit into the sentence. Their election page promised “a review of where, when and how a new leisure centre can be provided”. But then came the political nudge: “Conservatives refused to consider building a new leisure centre at Martello Lakes instead of Princes Parade – had they done so it could have been completed by now – but we will explore this and all options.”

So no, the Greens’ 2023 wording wasn’t quite the same as saying “we will build the pool at Martello Lakes”. It was cleverer/slipperier than that. It let voters hear Martello Lakes, blame the Conservatives, imagine a completed leisure centre, and still left the party a small hatch marked “review” in case the whole thing later sank under the weight of its own convenience.

Now we have the council’s May 2026 Overview and Scrutiny papers, and the mood music has changed from campaign rally to undertaker’s flute. The presentation says the “reserved land at Martello Lakes site is not considered suitable to accommodate a new leisure centre / swimming facility due to the limited catchment” compared with Otterpool Park. That is not a tweak. That is the council’s own evidence taking the old promise outside and quietly burying it behind the leisure strategy.

The same council material says the Martello Lakes £5.5 million Section 106 contribution has been received and allocated to Folkestone Sports Centre Trust and Hythe Pool redevelopment. It also says further analysis has been undertaken and that alternative sports uses for the reserved land have been considered by The Sports Consultancy. In plain English: the money trail has moved, the pool has moved, and Martello Lakes is being repackaged.

And what is the replacement vision? Four uncovered or covered padel courts, two multi-use tennis courts, junior grass football pitches, changing facilities, and a community studio/multi-purpose room. The estimated capital cost is £2.5 million, with another £250,000 estimated for a feasibility study and reserved matters planning application. The promised pool hasn’t become a smaller pool. It has become a racket sport with a planning timetable.

Let’s be fair. Padel may be perfectly enjoyable. Tennis courts may be useful. Junior football pitches may be welcome. A community room may well help a growing estate. But none of these things is a swimming pool. None of them is the leisure centre used for years as the great Martello Lakes alternative. If residents were sold a lifeboat and handed a paddle bat, they’re entitled to notice the difference.

The Overview and Scrutiny feedback shows the human problem hasn’t disappeared. Members recorded concern about “the limited availability of swimming and leisure facilities for Romney Marsh communities” and the distance residents must travel to Hythe, Folkestone or neighbouring districts. The same feedback recognised that analysis does not support Martello Lakes as suitable for a swimming pool, but backed further work on alternative sport, leisure and community uses.

That is the real sting. The need was never imaginary. Romney Marsh residents still lack easy access to swimming and leisure provision. Hythe still has an ageing pool. Folkestone lost its pool when the old Sports Centre operation collapsed. The problem was real; the politics around Martello Lakes was the fantasy layer spread on top.

Shepway Vox warned in June 2023 that the search for a new pool had already become a long-running financial albatross. We noted then that Hythe Swimming Pool was almost 50 years old, that earlier council material said both Folkestone Sports Centre and Hythe Swimming Pool were in poor condition, and that the council had been trying to put in place a replacement or refurbishment scheme since 1999. The question we asked then still stands: where, when, and at what cost?

Since then, the story has grown even messier. Shepway Vox has also reported on the council’s £2.421 million capital grant to The Sports Trust to reopen Folkestone Sports Centre’s pool, with the awkward question that taxpayers are funding major works on a site the council does not own. That matters because the politics of local swimming provision is now split between three separate pressures: Folkestone’s rescue package, Hythe’s refurbishment, and Martello Lakes’ vanishing act.

Hythe Pool is at least now being treated as a real project rather than a campaign prop. The May 2026 papers set out four options: basic refurbishment at £4.0 million, a remodelled option at £4.7 million, a fully electric remodel at £6.8 million, and an enhanced option at £10.7 million. The same papers say the agreed budget in the Medium Term Capital Programme is £6 million, with £2 million in 2026/27 and £4 million in 2027/28.

The financial comparison is brutal. The current Hythe Pool net annual cost is put at about £285,000 a year. The options presented suggest that refurbishment could reduce the annual running burden sharply, while the enhanced £10.7 million option is said to offer a possible £38,000 surplus if the gym and studio facility is included. In short, the grown-up debate is not whether residents need swimming provision; it is what the council can afford, what it should prioritise, and whether it can finally stop confusing wishful thinking with strategy.

The timetable is not exactly “immediately start work” either. The Hythe Pool programme points to RIBA 2 and surveys from July to October 2026, RIBA 3-4 work from November 2026 to March 2027, planning submission or approval in spring/summer 2027, contractor appointment in autumn 2027, and works starting in winter 2027 or spring 2028. For residents who were told Martello Lakes could have been the answer years ago, that is a long queue for a changing room that still hasn’t been built.

So where does that leave the Lib Dems and Greens? The honest answer is awkward for both. The Lib Dems made the clearest promise: given control, scrap Princes Parade, take the Martello Lakes option, and “immediately start work” on a new swimming pool there. The Greens helped create the Martello Lakes expectation in 2019 and then, in 2023, kept the ghost alive by saying the Conservatives had refused to consider a Martello Lakes leisure centre and that it “could have been completed by now”.

They can say the evidence has changed. They can say the catchment analysis now points elsewhere. They can say government is harder than opposition, which is true, though hardly a discovery requiring a commemorative plaque. What they can’t credibly say is that residents imagined the Martello Lakes pool promise. They didn’t. They read it. They heard it. They were invited to believe it.

The bigger lesson is simple. Don’t campaign with certainty you haven’t earned. Don’t turn a complex leisure strategy into a magic map with a swimming pool drawn on it. And don’t be surprised when residents remember the words “immediately”, “could have been completed by now”, and “new swimming pool there” after the council comes back with padel courts and a six-month feasibility study.

Martello Lakes may yet get a useful community sports facility. Hythe Pool may yet get the investment it has needed for decades. Folkestone Sports Centre may yet reopen its pool and serve schools and families again. But the political promise of a Martello Lakes swimming pool has sunk without trace, and both the Lib Dems and Greens helped launch it. Somewhere in the paperwork, the pool they promised is still doing lengths — not in water, but in minutes, motions and memories.

The Shepway Vox Team

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