Martello Lakes Pool Promise Replaced as Hythe Pool Refurbishment Could Cost £10.7m

When Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Cabinet meets on 22 July, members will be asked to set two leisure projects moving. One involves spending £353,000 developing plans to refurbish Hythe Pool at South Road. The other seeks £250,000 to preserve and design a sports and community scheme at Martello Lakes. That’s £603,000 on studies, surveys, designs and planning before anybody picks up a shovel.

Those reports do more than divide Hythe’s future leisure provision between two sites. Read together, they quietly bury a political promise that helped bring down the Princes Parade scheme and helped carry several members of today’s administration towards power: the promise of a new swimming pool and leisure centre at Martello Lakes.

How Martello Lakes became the answer

The roots stretch back to the 2010 planning agreement for the former Nickolls Quarry development. It reserved up to 1.6 hectares for sports, leisure and community use, with the possibility of transferring the land to the council for £1. The original agreement also provided a £3.2 million contribution towards leisure facilities, although that figure later increased through indexation.

During the bitter battle over Princes Parade, Martello Lakes became the alternative horse many opposition politicians backed. A detailed 2014 appraisal prepared for the Save Princes Parade campaign argued that Nickolls Quarry offered overwhelming advantages: serviced land, fewer technical risks, access from the A259 and a growing community around it. It wasn’t an official council report, but it gave the campaign a coherent, evidence-based counterproposal rather than simply saying “not here”.

The appraisal was scathing about Princes Parade’s landfill, piling, drainage and infrastructure risks. It also acknowledged that rebuilding at South Road would mean limited parking and a prolonged period without a local pool. Its conclusion was blunt: Nickolls Quarry was the strongest option, while South Road and Princes Parade carried disadvantages that could be avoided.

Then came the politics.

In June 2019, Councillor Tim Prater (pictured) moved a formal council motion, seconded by Councillor Lesley Whybrow, calling for the Princes Parade application to be withdrawn and the Martello Lakes option taken up “immediately”. It demanded plans by November 2019 for opening a new swimming pool and leisure centre there. The motion passed by 15 votes to 14, although the Monitoring Officer warned that it wasn’t binding on the Executive.

The promise survived beyond that vote. Liberal Democrats later said they would scrap Princes Parade and immediately start work on a Martello Lakes pool if they gained control, while Greens argued the previous Conservative administration could already have delivered a leisure centre there. Residents weren’t imagining the pledge after swallowing too much pool water. They heard it, read it and were invited to believe it.

The evidence changes the destination

Now comes the turning point.

The evidence before Cabinet says Martello Lakes shouldn’t accommodate a swimming pool or major leisure centre. Officers say its catchment is too small and overlaps by 85% with the proposed future leisure centre at Otterpool Park. Otterpool is therefore judged the better location because of its larger catchment, connections and expected population growth.

That is a serious operational argument, not some excuse scribbled on the back of a changing-room locker. Councillors shouldn’t build the wrong facility merely to avoid admitting that circumstances and evidence have changed.

But they must admit it.

Controlling the Council is harder than opposition; that’s hardly a discovery requiring a brass plaque. The issue isn’t that councillors changed their minds. It’s whether they’ll explain openly what changed, publish the evidence behind the catchment conclusions and acknowledge that the Martello Lakes pool promise is no longer being pursued.

South Road returns from the substitutes’ bench

While Martello Lakes has lost its pool, South Road has staged quite a comeback. The council admits Hythe Pool was earmarked for disposal for around 20 years while a replacement was expected elsewhere. Investment was consequently restricted largely to essential maintenance, leaving the building to decline while successive grand plans went round the houses.

A 2025 survey identified £2.21 million of required work over five years. The fire-alarm system, electrics and boilers need major attention; the roof requires replacement; and the building needs repointing and wider repairs. The council rates closure caused by the ageing facility as both highly serious and highly likely.

Nor can Hythe Pool simply be allowed to sink. The council’s leisure assessment says the district already has a significant shortage of swimming space. Even with Folkestone Sports Centre reopening and a future Otterpool pool operating, provision would remain below demand. Hythe’s main and learner pools are therefore central to the district’s plans, not decorative extras that can be popped into storage.

Cabinet is being asked to take two options forward. Option three is a fully electric remodel costing an indicative £6.8 million. Option four is a £10.7 million redevelopment with a two-storey extension, new changing village, gym, community studio and dry changing facilities. Both would retain the main and learner pools, improve accessibility and use heat pumps and solar energy.

Here’s the financial fly in the ointment: the council has only £6 million allocated. Option three is already £800,000 above that figure; option four is £4.7 million over it. These are high-level estimates before the detailed surveys and cost planning, so further funding may have to return to Cabinet and Full Council.

The £353,000 consultancy work should provide better designs, surveys, carbon modelling, revenue assumptions and cost confidence. Yet the Cabinet report doesn’t say how long Hythe Pool would close during construction or where users, clubs and lessons would go. That isn’t a minor detail. The old campaign appraisal treated prolonged closure as one of South Road’s biggest weaknesses, and the answer remains missing.

What remains at Martello Lakes

Martello Lakes is now being offered four covered padel courts, two multi-use courts, three under-eight football pitches, a small community studio, changing facilities and parking. The estimated construction cost is around £2.5 million, although no delivery funding currently sits in the capital programme.

The council must notify the landowner by 29 October 2026 if it wants to preserve its right to acquire the land for £1, then submit a reserved-matters application by 29 October 2027. The proposed £250,000 would fund the feasibility study, design, business plan and planning work, using £200,000 from the Leisure Reserve and £50,000 from the Business Rates Reserve.

Preserving that land is sensible. Letting a potentially valuable community asset slip away for want of a letter would be municipal butterfingers. But the legal advice is clear: spending the £250,000 won’t commit the council to submit the application or build the scheme. Cabinet is buying evidence, time and an option—not padel courts, football pitches or a community building.

Martello Lakes may yet gain useful facilities. South Road may finally become the modern pool Hythe has waited decades for. Both could be sensible decisions.

But they aren’t the decisions residents were promised.

On 22 July, Cabinet should safeguard the Martello Lakes land and properly test the South Road options. But the Green-led administration must also explain, in plain English and without the usual consultant soup, how a site they once championed for a cheaper, safer swimming pool has ended up offering residents the prospect of padel instead.

The pool promise hasn’t been postponed.

It has been replaced.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is Not a Crime