WORKINGTON'S CONSERVATIVE MP has launched a campaign to bring back Keswick's pool. 

Back in 2021, Allerdale Borough Council announced that Keswick Pool would close permanently due to significant maintenance and repair costs. 

At the time, during Covid, it was considered that relining the pool and repairing drainage channels would cost between £150,000 and £200,000 - refilling the pool and reheating it would alone cost £20,000.

Following the closure decision, Friends of Keswick Leisure was set up by Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Penrith & Solway Markus Campbell-Savours, with a petition also being created with hopes to save the popular swimming pool.

Mark Jenkinson MP said: “Our local Labour-led councils don't have great track record when it comes to swimming pools.

“Cumbria County Council closed Wigton Baths until it was saved by a local charity.

"The same administration closed the Netherhall School swimming pool for the sake of just £150,000 investment.

“When I secured nearly £5m government funding for a new pool in Maryport as part of the Maryport High Street funding, Conservative-controlled Allerdale Borough Council embraced it, finding the additional capital required to deal with rising construction costs. 

“When the baton again passed to Labour-led Cumberland Council, they refused the government funding both to build and to run it - cancelling the plans in the face of widespread public opposition.

“In June 2023 they said they'd 'look again', but local councillors have since fallen silent.  The people of Keswick shouldn’t settle for second best.  I am prepared to fight for this pool, and I hope you will join me,” he said.

In 2022, a town-wide consultation discovered a significant need for the swimming facility.

The resulting feasibility report presented two alternatives – a cost of £9.3m for a smaller pool or £13.6m for a larger facility.

Labour's Penrith and the Solway candidate  Markus Campbell-Savours said: “It was a Conservative council that closed the Keswick pool in 2021. They admitted at the time they had done no preparation towards opening a new pool.

“It was Labour and independent councillors working with the community who forced them to deliver a needs assessment and feasibility study. If after three years an MP finally wants to get involved, that’s fine.

“They can start by asking the Government to provide sufficient revenue funding for councils, deal with the energy cost crisis for pools and stop pretending we had it so good.”