Outdoor pool could lose £2k during 'forced closure'

An outdoor pool will lose "vital income" after being forced to close for a day, volunteers have said.

Planned work on the power network in Lydney, Forest of Dean, will cut electricity to Gloucestershire's Bathurst Pool on Wednesday, resulting in the facility's closure and leaving hundreds of swimmers unable to attend.

National Grid bosses said they have scheduled the work outside of the school holidays to minimise disruption to the pool.

But, Bob Berryman, chair of trustees and site manager, said they "rely on good days to counteract the bad days" and they could lose more than £2,000.

Mr Berryman said he urged the National Grid to delay the work until the end of the season.

"They said they gave us plenty of warning and could give us some details if we wanted to hire generators ourselves. Generators are just too costly," he said.

"We have to reply on the weather when we get it and at the moment we're making our expenses, so it's annoying to lose one day," he added.

Mr Berryman said they had already experienced some busy days during the hot weather.

"We've got a maximum of 350 on site at any one time and we've had to operate a one-in, one-out policy.

"We've been up to capacity on three occasions over the past few days," he added.

National Grid is replacing an electrical asset at a nearby industrial estate and the work must be completed by August.

A spokesperson said: "While we know it's not ideal, planned outages are sometimes necessary when we are replacing assets on the electricity network.

"We scheduled this work outside of the school holidays to minimise disruption to the pool, but we're sorry for the inconvenience caused by the closure."

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