The Long Read: Martello Lakes Pool Promise: Where the £5.5m S106 Money Went
Folkestone & Hythe’s own papers show the Martello Lakes swimming pool dream has vanished. The money has gone elsewhere, the land decision is still coming, and the public still hasn’t been shown the full calculation behind the £5.5m developer contribution.
There are swimming pools. There are political promises. And then there is Martello Lakes, where a pool can apparently exist for years in election leaflets, campaign arguments and council chamber speeches, only to reappear in 2026 as padel courts, tennis courts, junior football pitches and a community room.
The Shepway Vox Team has gone through the Martello Lakes Section 106 agreement the January and March 2026 council papers, the May 2026 Overview and Scrutiny papers, Cabinet material, council statements and Shepway Vox’s earlier coverage. The conclusion is awkward but clear. The council may have legal room under the S106 to spend the money away from Martello Lakes. But the way this has been explained to residents is about as transparent as a steamed-up changing-room window.
At the centre of the story is one line in the council’s May 2026 scrutiny presentation: “Martello Lakes £5.5m s106 contribution received by the council”, allocated to Folkestone Sports Centre Trust and Hythe Pool redevelopment. That sounds simple. It isn’t. The original 2010 S106 agreement defines the “Sports Leisure and Community Contribution” as £3.2m, not £5.5m. The £5.5m may be the indexed amount received over time. It may well be correct. But the council papers we’ve seen still don’t publish the payment ledger, the five instalment dates, the index used, the interest if any, or the reconciliation from £3.2m to £5.5m.
That matters because this was never just loose change from the back of the Civic Centre sofa. This was planning-obligation money tied to a major housing development at Nickolls Quarry/Martello Lakes, secured because hundreds of new homes create demands on local infrastructure. In plain English, developers get permission to build; the community gets contributions to soften the impact. That is the bargain. The public is entitled to know exactly where the money went.
The legal document is more subtle than the politics ever was. The S106 doesn’t say, in neat tabloid capitals, “BUILD A SWIMMING POOL AT MARTELLO LAKES OR ELSE.” It defines a “Sports Leisure and Community Centre” as a centre proposed on the Sports Leisure and Community Land to provide “sports, leisure and associated community facilities”. It also defines the land as up to 1.6 hectares, fully remediated and serviced for sports, leisure and community purposes. So yes, there was a land route. Yes, there was a centre route. No, there was not a simple locked promise of a pool.
Original Proposed location of Matello Lakes Leisure Centre
Schedule 2 of the s106 then opens the trapdoor. The owner had to reserve the land and pay £100,000 within 12 months as the first part of the contribution for a feasibility study. If the study cost more, the council could ask for up to another £100,000. After that, the council could choose either to use the contribution for improving sports, leisure and community facilities in the district, “with priority being given to Hythe”, or to submit a planning application for a Sports Leisure and Community Centre on the Martello Lakes land.
That is the phrase around which the whole story now turns: “with priority being given to Hythe”. Not “only Hythe”. Not “only Martello Lakes”. Not “a swimming pool must be built there”. Priority. That gives the council flexibility. It also gives residents every right to ask whether £1.5m of Martello-related S106 money going to Folkestone Sports Centre sits comfortably with that priority, especially when Hythe Pool is still waiting for its final option and Martello Lakes itself is being offered a smaller sports facility.
The payment structure is also important. Once the council elects to use the money off-site, the agreement says the outstanding contribution is paid in five 20% instalments, triggered before completion of more than 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 dwellings. So the base £3.2m was not just one cheque. It was £100,000 first, then the remaining £3.1m in five instalments of £620,000 before indexation. Again, that makes the £5.5m figure plausible. But plausible isn’t audited. The ledger is still the missing body in this paperwork whodunnit.
There is another important sting. If the council takes the off-site route and receives the final tranche, the owner is released from the obligation to reserve the Sports Leisure and Community Land. In other words, the money and the land are not a guaranteed double prize. The council can take the money route and the land route can weaken. That’s not us being dramatic. That’s the agreement.
If the council had gone down the on-site centre route, the developer would have had to remediate, grade and compact the land above the flood plain, provide services, provide vehicular access, and offer the relevant land to the council for £1. But even then, the land covenant was not eternal. If planning permission for the Sports Leisure and Community Centre remained unimplemented for eight years after grant, and the contribution had been paid in full, the land would revert unencumbered to the owner. The legal swimming pool, if one can call it that, always came with armbands and a stopwatch.
The plan attached to the S106 is even more revealing. Plan 3 says the sports/community feasibility land “may also be considered for use as a Local Centre”, with residual areas potentially becoming residential land, or the whole sports/community land being used for mixed use if not required. That does not read like a sacred covenant to deliver a public pool. It reads like a developer and council keeping options open — which is fine legally, but rather less fine if politicians later sold it as a firm swimming-pool solution.
And sold it they did. Shepway Vox’s earlier article set out the political trail. The Liberal Democrats said they would “immediately start work” on a swimming pool at Martello Lakes. The Greens said the Conservatives had refused to consider building a leisure centre there and that it “could have been completed by now”. The Greens’ wording was more artful — a review, an exploration, an all-options escape hatch — but the public impression was obvious enough. Martello Lakes was held up as the alternative to Princes Parade. The pool that would save the day. The magic blue rectangle on the political map.
Now compare that with the council’s own May 2026 presentation. The reserved land at Martello Lakes “is not considered suitable to accommodate a new leisure centre / swimming facility” because of the limited catchment when compared with Otterpool Park – where there is not a single home built. The replacement mix is four uncovered or covered padel courts, two multi-use tennis courts, junior grass football pitches, changing facilities, and a community studio/multipurpose room. Estimated capital cost: £2.5m. Estimated feasibility and reserved matters work: £250,000.
Let’s be fair. Padel courts may be useful. Tennis courts may be well used. Junior football pitches matter. A community studio could help a growing estate that badly needs somewhere to meet, organise, vote, celebrate and complain about bins like every properly functioning community does. But none of that is a swimming pool. None of it is the great leisure centre once waved around in the Princes Parade wars. If residents were promised a lifeboat and are now being shown a paddle bat, they are entitled to notice the difference.
The January 2026 council statement had already softened the ground. It said councillors would consider whether to take up the Martello Lakes land later in the year, but that the site was not considered suitable for a new leisure centre because of limited catchment. It added that sports experts had advised a better location for a new centre would be Otterpool Park, with alternative sports and leisure uses for Martello Lakes to be explored. It also said £6m was proposed for Hythe Pool work, which “could be offset” by £5.5m in the S106 agreement “in addition to the land offer”, earmarked for district sport and leisure facilities “with priority given to Hythe”.
Then came the Folkestone Sports Centre grant. In March 2026, Cabinet approved a capital grant of £2,421,250 to The Sports Trust for works required to reopen Folkestone Sports Centre. The report says Folkestone Sports Centre Trust went into administration in August 2024, leaving Hythe Pool as the only public swimming baths in the district. It says The Sports Trust bought the centre in May 2025 and sought support. It also says an earlier August 2025 proposal for £1.544m shortfall capital funding plus four years of £200,000 annual revenue grant was rejected because it did not specifically fund reopening the pool and created an uncertain subsidy-control position.
The second proposal, from October 2025, focused on the capital works needed to reopen the swimming pool: pool works, reception and changing-room renovation, solar panels and roof repairs. Cabinet was told the grant would address the lack of swimming provision, support schools, restore a community asset, and allow Hythe Pool’s refurbishment to proceed without leaving the district with no public swimming pool. That is a serious argument. Nobody should pretend Folkestone’s pool doesn’t matter. In a coastal district, children needing somewhere to learn to swim is not a luxury. It is basic public common sense with a changing-room key.
But the funding line deserves searchlights. The Cabinet report says the 2026/27 capital programme included a £2.4m Leisure Strategy provision for the grant, funded by £1.5m from S106 contributions and £0.9m from capital receipts. So the whole Folkestone grant is not S106 money. But £1.5m of it is. That appears to leave roughly £4m of the stated £5.5m Martello Lakes S106 pot for Hythe Pool — assuming the whole £5.5m is indeed the indexed sports/leisure/community contribution, and not a muddled total from different S106 obligations.
That is why the council must publish the reconciliation. Not a sentence. Not a mood board. Not a shiny presentation bullet. A proper receipt ledger: date received, trigger reached, base amount, index applied, indexed sum, interest if any, and allocation. The public needs to know whether £5.5m is solely the indexed Sports Leisure and Community Contribution, or whether any other planning obligations have been swept into the headline. The original agreement contains other sums — education, bus, highways, railway, monitoring and pedestrian-route contributions — but those are not the same legal pot as the sports/leisure/community contribution. The distinction matters.
The council’s own risk analysis on the Sports Trust grant is not naive. It recognises cost-overrun risk, delivery risk, operational risk, and the danger that the pool could close again after public money has gone in. It says payments are retrospective, cost information will be provided on an open-book basis, the Trust must follow council-equivalent procurement thresholds, officers can verify works, and other external funding must be declared and must not duplicate grant-funded items. It also notes the grant covers only part of a wider £4.5m refurbishment project, meaning The Sports Trust will need other income streams, including land sales, to complete the rest of the premises.
That is the good part. There are safeguards. The bad part is that the council is still putting public money into a site it does not own. Shepway Vox previously described the arithmetic bluntly: £2.4m against pool works estimated at £4.5m is about 53% of the pool-only cost. That does not automatically make the grant wrong. But it does mean the grant conditions, community access, price monitoring, clawback and long-term public benefit need to be watertight. Warm words are lovely; they do not reopen pools if the business model leaks.
Meanwhile, Hythe Pool finally has options on paper. Alliance Leisure Services has been appointed under the UK Leisure Framework to carry out a RIBA 1 feasibility report, with GT3 as architects, Hadron Consulting on project management, The Sports Consultancy on sport and leisure, and Etec Group as contractors. The four options are basic refurbishment, remodelled, remodelled fully electric, and enhanced. The indicative build costs are £4.0m, £4.7m, £6.8m and £10.7m respectively.
The finance slide is stark. The agreed Medium Term Capital Programme budget for Hythe Pool is £6m: £2m in 2026/27 and £4m in 2027/28. The existing pool costs about £285,000 a year net to run. The options suggest annual running costs could fall sharply: around £45,000 for the basic refurbishment, £50,000 for the remodelled option, £37,000 for the fully electric option, and a possible £38,000 surplus for the enhanced option if the gym and studio are included. RIBA stages 2–4 and detailed surveys are estimated at £650,000 to £800,000, depending on option. Any extra capital budget will need formal approval through budget-setting.
The timetable is not exactly “immediately start work”. The May papers point to Cabinet approval for preferred options to proceed to RIBA 2 in July 2026; RIBA 2 and site surveys from July to October 2026; Cabinet approval for the preferred option to proceed to RIBA 3–4 in November 2026; detailed design to March 2027; approval in April 2027; planning in spring/summer 2027; contractor appointment in autumn 2027; and works starting in winter 2027 or spring 2028. That may be realistic. It is not quick. Residents who were told Martello Lakes could have been the answer years ago may feel they have been queuing in wet socks ever since.
The May 2026 Overview and Scrutiny report itself is also oddly bloodless. Its legal comments say there are “no direct legal implications”. Its finance comments say there are “no financial implications”. This sits in a report package discussing a £5.5m S106 receipt, a £2.421m grant to The Sports Trust, a £6m Hythe Pool budget, a possible £10.7m enhanced option, a £2.5m Martello Lakes sports proposal, £250,000 of feasibility/reserved matters work, and a looming land deadline. Technically, yes, the committee was being asked to note and comment. But to ordinary residents, “no financial implications” in this story feels like a fire alarm labelled “slightly warm”.
And that land deadline is real. The May presentation says the council must decide to take the Martello Lakes land by 29 October 2026, with a reserved matters application then required by 29 October 2027. The Cabinet forward plan lists “Land at Martello Lakes” as a key decision for determination, with the decision due in June 2026 and Corporate Directors Andy Blaszkowicz and Ewan Green responsible. It also lists Hythe Pool Refurbishment Options as a Cabinet decision due in June 2026. So Cabinet has decided the Folkestone Sports Centre grant. It has not, on the papers seen, finally decided the Martello Lakes land or the Hythe Pool preferred option.
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