The story of the pool at Chipping Norton illustrates the town's extraordinary community spirit. In 1932, before the days of a national fire service, Chipping Norton founded a charity and raised £1,000 for its own fire engine.

After the war the government set up a national network of county and metropolitan brigades. All over the country town councils handed over their engines to the new brigades – but not Chipping Norton. Our town council said it didn’t own the engine – it belonged to the charity and if the government wanted it they would have to pay for it!

The Fire Brigade Charity used the proceeds of the sale to buy a football pitch, a cricket field and tennis courts for the community. Then in 1963 a new fundraising campaign began for a swimming pool to be built . Again the people of Chipping Norton showed what they could do, raising the funds in just 7 years and our open-air pool was opened in 1970.

West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) took over the running of the pool and sub-contracted management of the pool to Wycombe Leisure. Then, in July 2002, the town’s new leisure centre (with its own heated indoor swimming pool) was opened and WODC announced that the outdoor pool was to close.

2003 saw the creation of KOPO (Keep Our Pool Open) a campaigning group united by their love of the facility. They mounted a spirited “Use it or Lose It” campaign collecting 3,000 names on a petition. KOPO garnered tremendous publicity and organised many special events that saw numbers and income rise.

Together with the support of the Town Council they lobbied WODC who agreed a one-year reprieve.

Late in 2004 WODC announced the withdrawal of their subsidy and the KOPO committee formed a company to manage The Lido, Chipping Norton Lido Limited signed a new lease to run the site and recruited a new manager.

After two years of intense campaigning, KOPO was successful in keeping the Chipping Norton Lido open, although the grant from WODC was halved and eventually cut entirely. Chipping Norton Town Council agreed to award the Lido £6,000 for two years but the majority of the trading deficit has been met from funds raised by the Lido team. In the future fund raising will continue to be important to subsidise the operating costs, improve the facilities and replace the aging machinery and plant.

Find out how you can help – go to Securing the Lido’s Future.

Download the Overview of the 2006 season here (Word document 72KB)