Labour pulls Heritage Lottery Bid for Moseley Road baths

Labour pulls Heritage Lottery Bid for Moseley Road baths

Bad news on our efforts to restore the historic Moseley Road baths and save it for future generations. Birmingham’s Labour run administration has pulled the submission for Heritage Lottery Funding to start the restoration of Moseley Road baths in 2014. 

Readers of my blog will know that earlier this year, as Cabinet member for Leisure, Sport and Culture, I had managed to persuade the Finance department of the Council had managed to set aside £3million to be used as match funding against a £5million bid for Heritage Lottery Funds. The total of £8million would do the following in the building:

• Permanent repairs to the exterior fabric of the building with a life of 25 years – so basically a complete re-roofing to stop any water ingress 
• Complete re-wiring and new machinery (eg new boilers) for the pool. We would be particular keen to install a combined heat and power system in the boiler house. This would heat all the buildings along Moseley Road and help to regenerate this corridor. 
• Pool 2 maintained as a community swimming pool 
• Pool 1 boarded over and used for community use. 

A future phase of the restoration would involve getting pool 1 back in use as a swimming pool. Estimated cost of doing this is £9million. 

For more details see http://martinmullaney.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/3million-now-set-aside-by-council-for.html



The Cabinet report giving the go-ahead for the Heritage Lottery Funding submission was supposed to be submitted to Cabinet on Monday 10th December, to enable the bid to be submitted by the 14th December deadline. The Deputy Leader, Councillor Ian Ward, has instead pulled the report and the bid. The impact of this is that the next round of Heritage Lottery Bids for bids in the £5million mark is in June. Will the Labour Council allow the bid to go-ahead then?

My understanding is that the Labour Council have frozen all future capital expenditure and any bids for external money, so as to review which to keep. Will the Heritage Lottery bid for Moseley Road baths survive this review?