Eastville Park Lido CIC is run by a group of local volunteers, working together to get an outdoor swimming pool built in our local park. Eastville Park is located in East Bristol, in the middle of a very diverse urban community, both ethnically and economically. Our vision is for a pool which is welcoming and accessible to EVERYONE in our local community, providing high quality, low environmental impact, heated, outdoor swimming facilities which will help to reduce social isolation and improve health for all Eastville Park was originally created with a Lido, which was bombed in the Second World War and has now fallen into disrepair. A new pool -, in a new location in the park, would benefit the local communities of Eastville, Easton and Fishponds (Bristol), and wider communities of Bristol. In Bristol, there is a shocking lack of safe and accessible outdoor swimming provision. The Clifton Lido is expensive and has a waiting list of over 2,000 people and the Henleaze Swimming Lake has a similar sized waiting list. The local rivers are filthy and there are live campaigns running focused on cleaning up Bristol's waterways. The Eastville Park Lido CIC has been established to ensure the Lido will be developed as a non-profit, community-led resource of benefit to local people in perpetuity. We are now in Phase Two of this four phase project: community engagement and design consultation to ensure we can create a Lido which will be inclusive and welcoming for all members of the wonderfully diverse target community of future pool users. The Lido Steering Group is made up of volunteers, all live locally to the Park, and including our three Directors, we are 65% women and 50% global majority. We hold a range of useful professional skills including architect, fundraising consultant, GP, community organisers, charity leaders, finance professionals, keen swimmers and creatives. Our focus in the 2024 - 2025 year was on community engagement and on trying to build relationships with the new councillors and MPs in our area, plus completing our business plan and demonstrating the viability of the lido. We continued to gather responses to our online survey. During November and December 2024 we flyered approximately 4,500 households in BS5 and BS16 within 30minutes walk of the proposed site for the lido. In total, by March 2025 we had received 2,289 responses to the 22-question survey with 91% of responses in favour of the lido. We gathered a range of useful data from this survey which is being fed into the design and thinking for the lido. We explored price, opening hours, accessibility, inclusion, how people would travel - the full survey results are available on our website here: The full survey results are available on our website. 71% of respondents were women and 18% were global majority. Ages ranged from 11 to 80 years old. 98% said they will use the pool monthly with 61% saying they will use it weekly. The most favourable price bracket was between GBP 3-GBP 6 per swim (average GBP 5) and 90% were open to paying a sliding scale membership fee to ensure access to the lido could be prioritised for the local community. The responses really galvanised the Steering Group and Directors and gave us all a much-needed boost to continue giving our time to this project. A number of our steering group proactively met with their MPs and we had engagement with Cllr Ed Fraser (Green), Kerry McCarthy MP (Labour) Damian Egan MP (Labour) and Cllr Stephen Williams, Chair of the Public Health and Communities Committee at Bristol City Council. There is broad support for the lido plans from these individuals. We mobilised our own community of supporters to lobby a meeting of the Public Health and Communities Committee and 92 independent statements were submitted in favour of the lido. We were hugely grateful for this expression of support from our community. Directors Sarah Moore and Shankari Raj met with Richard Fletcher, Parks Services Manager to share the survey responses and get a clearer understanding of what we need to provide BCC so they can formally consider our proposal. Richard requested a costed business plan. We were immensely grateful to Jack Webb who had approached us to offer volunteer support in March 2025. Jack's financial expertise was out to good work and has produced a solid business plan, with benchmarking based on lidos of similar sizes in similarly populated locations. This analysis demonstrates that the Lido, cafe, sauna, space hire and events plan would combine to generate a healthy turnover and begin delivering a profit in year three of operations, with enough surplus by year five to be paying a commercial rent to Bristol City Council and providing funding for projects in the park. Sarah Moore actively reached out and arranged a meeting with the Chair of the Friends of Eastville Park (FOEP) on an online meeting in August 2025. There is some opposition to the Lido proposal from the FOEP and we are keen to build bridges. We believe the lido has the potential to be a complementary offering in Eastville Park, adjacent to the community cafe and Nissen Hut venue which FOEP manage and offer for hire to community groups and hold events throughout the year for the local community. FOEP expressed some frustration with historic communications about the Lido pre-Covid. To acknowledge these frustrations, the EPL Directors sent a letter of apology to FOEP expressing our desire to draw a line under historic interactions and setting out our aspiration to work together to bring good quality facilities and experiences to everyone in our community. We also offered to fund a session of mediation between our groups towards building a foundation of trust. To date, there has been no response from FOEP to the letter and the offer of mediation. Our door is still open if FOEP decide they would like to explore how we can work together. Another huge achievement this year was facilitated by Quartet Community Foundation who introduced us to Global City Futures, a professional sustainability consultancy. We are hugely grateful to the team led by Director Elaine Anning, who provided us with pro bono consultancy services to evaluate the potential social value that could be delivered by the Eastville Park Lido. The outcome of this work was a report documenting an estimated GBP 28 million of social value delivered over the first 10 years of the Lido operations including 15 - 20 local jobs, improved mental and physical health and wellbeing for pool users, and a local economy uplift from construction activity. Overall, it has been a positive year with significant foundational elements now in place. We are now able to begin engaging with prospective funders and partners towards the capital phase of this project. However, our key next step is focussed on engaging Bristol City Council to consider an application for a community asset transfer (CAT) on the proposed site for the lido - the disused bowling green at the top of Eastville Park, adjacent to the children's play area. This location has been identified due to its proximity to existing leisure infrastructure in the Park and to Fishponds Road where there are 10 bus routes, nearby blue badge parking, amenities, cycle routes and cycle parking. Like much community work run by volunteers, the pace can be slow. The dedication and commitment of our steering group (all volunteers fitting in meetings and activity around their working lives and family commitments) is absolutely critical to the progress we have made this year. We are so grateful for your enduring support, and for the wider support from our local community. Thank you for continuing to believe in the vision of a welcoming, affordable, inclusive, accessible pool for everyone in our local community, right in the heart of our park.

No consultation with stakeholders

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration