More than 100 campaigners gathered outside the Active Ashton Pool on Saturday morning to appeal for the centre to be saved.

Active Tameside has announced the pool will close early next month, citing escalating costs and spiralling utility bills.

Tameside Council has said it is unable to provide a rescue package, with the Ashton leisure centre one of three Active Tameside sites to close in September.

There were high spirits, dance routines and chants of ‘save our pool’ but also tears and emotion as users spoke of what the closure will mean for them.

Leading the campaign former Labour councillor and now Green Party member Lorraine Whitehead said the new Wellness Centre, based in Denton, should have been built in Ashton – or at the very least a new site provided to replace the pool.

“Active have said they are closing the pool because of a lack of money and obviously it costs a lot to heat a pool of this size,” she said.

“Tameside Council won’t give Active anymore money, but we were promised when the Wellness Centre went up a new building to replace this one, but that never materialised.

“The council have known this building has been deteriorating for more than ten years but they have done nothing about it, absolutely nothing.”

Lorraine said she wanted to see the council step in and keep the Ashton centre open until ‘they provide the new building that was promised’.

“I led the campaign to save the pool last time and all the councillors were on board then and the MP because they knew it was going to be saved.

“People love this building – it’s not just a pool it’s a community. It’s saved people’s lives – people with mental health problems and the bereaved have come here and found support. I have seen this place turn people’s lives around.”

She added: “People have got friends and they all know each other and go together and shop and eat in Ashton after coming here, so businesses are going to lose out as well. But it’s just like one big family here and more like a community hub than it is a pool.”

Pupils from local schools also walk to the pool for their swimming lessons.

Lorraine said: “They look so lovely in their high viz jackets walking to the pool. Now those schools will have to hire a coach to take the children to Hyde, Denton or Copley, and I’m worried a lot of the schools won’t have that money in their budgets.

“There’s been a swimming pool in Ashton for 150 years. It’s a legacy, it should be treasured. There’s no dispute this building is deteriorating, but if they’d done what they had promised and put the Wellness centre here or given us the new building, we wouldn’t be in this position now.”

She said some 6,000 people had now signed a petition to keep the pool open and was delighted with the numbers turning out who supported the campaign saying: “This is the passion it brings out in people, they really care. But it’s not just the pool, we have the gym and the classes. 

“The average age here in the day is 50 plus. So a lot of those people, ladies in particular in their 60, 70s and 80s, say it’s when they stop exercising is when it hurts, so they will possibly end up at the local GPs’ door, at the hospitals which are already overcrowded.

“Closing the centre is not long-term thinking. It’s not rocket science that if people are healthier then they are not blocking the health service up.

“Everyone is so saddened by it, and we feel like we have been let down by broken promises.

“On a wet Saturday morning, so many have come out to demonstrate because they are all desperate to keep the place they love.”

Marion Wharton, 82, was one of those who lined up alongside the campaigners anxious for the pool to be retained.

“It’s my life, I’m here almost every day,” she said. “I can’t walk very far but I can do yoga and I can swim, and it’s a social thing too and they are taking it away and a lot of elderly people will miss it.

“Going somewhere else for us is a long way. I haven’t got a car and would have to rely on buses, and you’ve got to get to Ashton to go anywhere else on the bus.

“I’m positive but can’t lift my spirits, this has really done me down.”

One gentleman said the gym had some 1,500 members and questioned where everyone would go.

Another single mum described the closure of the pool as ‘devastating’.

“We are a little community and family unit here. 

“I’ve met so many people from coming swimming and we share problems and issues and help each other. If you close that then we lose that, and I have no one.”

She described the new Wellness centre in Denton as ‘useless’ because of the time she’d had to wait previously to use the facility.

“I went with my daughter last summer and we tried it. We paid to go in and then we sat waiting for a full hour in the reception area just until we could go in. Then, when we got in they were closing it, so we only got half an hour, so we lost out.”

She felt the swimming club itself would just disappear ‘because not everyone could afford to go to the different areas.’

Another father from Ashton, who had just joined a month previously so his son could benefit from swimming, said he had only just learned of the closure and could not believe he had not been warned sooner, but added they would not be able to travel further to another pool.

Tameside’s only former Green councillor, Lee Huntbach, was present to lend his support at the campaign.

He said: “I’m lucky that I have the option to drive to Copley or Denton, but many Ashton residents simply don’t have that choice. This facility has provided Tameside’s most deprived ward with swimming facilities right in the heart of their community.

“It is particularly disappointing after many years of promises to provide a new leisure centre that the Labour cabinet have failed to prepare any form of replacement.

“I understand that gas and oil heating costs have escalated, but that makes it all the more frustrating that sustainable alternatives using renewables haven’t been explored.”

He credited the Green controlled council in Bristol where one pool is powered entirely by solar thermal technology, meaning there are no fuel bills.

“Why couldn’t the Council and Active Tameside have had the foresight to explore similar options?” he said.

“Skyrocketing fossil fuel prices and Tory funding cuts are legitimate reasons for strains on council budgets, but this council consistently fails to find alternative solutions where other councils have.”

In a statement, Active Tameside have said that over the past 18 months the ‘significant financial changes’ in the national economy had ‘ravaged’ its financial capacity to remain financially viable as an organisation.

It states it is relocating schools, members, service users and clubs to its other facilities, while supporting staff to find roles at its other sites. 

At the latest full council meeting, Tameside Council Leader Ged Cooney said the council was not in a position to provide a rescue package.

“The current financial climate, particularly around increases in energy and related products such as chemicals, insurance and peoples’s cost, have hammered the leisure sector nationwide.

“Energy bills have increased between 150 per cent to 200 per cent compared to 2021 - swimming pools being especially hit because of their high consumption.

“To put it in local terms, this has taken Active Tameside’s utilities spend up to £2m a year. We have every sympathy with the plight they are facing and have done everything in our power to support them through these difficult times.

“Unfortunately we have now reached the limits of what we can do in terms of financial resources. We remain proud of the leisure offer that Active Tameside delivers to our residents.”

The Trust plans to close the pool on September 3. Two other sites, Active Etherow in Broadbottom and Adventure Longdendale, also run by Active Tameside, will also close at the start of next month.