Dear Editor,
Sadly, Labour-run Cheshire East Council have NOT said they will preserve the Art Deco front of the building.
Flag Lane Baths is a rare example in the UK of an Art Deco swimming pool but Cheshire East have only said they will ‘press’ for the façade of the former baths to be kept as part of any development.
That is not good enough.
Crewe First says that the entire building is of architectural and historical interest and should be listed and preserved and adapted for a new use.
Crewe has already lost far too much of its short history to the bulldozer and no more should be lost.
Charity ‘Always Ahead’ had hoped to transform the Art Deco public swimming baths into a community centre with an auditorium, a community grocery club, a heritage gallery, workspaces, outdoor sports area, and a restaurant.
The Crewe Corporation Public Swimming Baths or Flag Lane Baths were opened in November 1937 and built at a cost of £34,090.
The Baths were closed in 2016 and Always Ahead’s plans to revitalise it had secured Government support to the tune of £3.9m from the Towns Fund.
Subsequently, planning permission for the revamp was approved in 2022.
Since then, however, the project has suffered a huge cost increase of £2 MILLION, even before the building work had begun.
Now, the unelected Crewe Town Board, who are in charge of the Towns Fund schemes in Crewe, has pulled its support for the project.
It is now proposed that the site be used to provide a new ‘Alternative Provision School’, whatever that means ?????
Yours faithfully,
Cllr Brian Silvester
Leader
Crewe First
You dlmishing crewe history a gen it not nice so think you shood keep it I won’t there a a kid it a nice biling you cood make it in to suthing and make it nice please don’t get rid off it
Well Mr Misery is at it again. I’m sure he has a magic wand with which to conjure up a solution. A shame it didn’t help get him elected.
As a resident in close proximity to the baths, I’m sick of looking at them as they’re left to rot.
I think the best and cheapest solution now would be to level the site completely, and put in place a lighted residents parking with EV charging, expand the park and the hard surface courts. If will benefit us to a far greater extent than anything suggested so far.
Doesn’t the question need to be asked where the original funding has gone ? Yet again in Crewe, decisions never being finalised in a timely manner meaning increased funding being needed and local builders becoming frustrated and leaving projects unfinished or not even started due to time constraints. This is in no part the builder’s issue, as the council are unable to deal with or finalise projects. No-one seems able to make decisions!
Once again lies it’s listed Brian