Save Golden Lane Leisure Centre

Aim

The only public leisure centre in the Square Mile has been closed. We're fighting to reopen it in the way our community needs.

Golden Lane Leisure Centre has served the residents of the City of London for over 60 years. It has a 20-metre pool, a sports hall, a gym, and a multi-use hall. It serves elderly residents, SEND children, families on low incomes, and patients on GP-prescribed exercise programmes. It is the only publicly funded leisure facility in the Square Mile.

On 30 April 2026, the City of London Corporation closed it — with 30 days' notice, no committee vote, no completed equality impact assessment, and no alternative operator approached. It is the only Fusion Lifestyle closure in England. Every other council found a solution. The wealthiest square mile on earth did not.

We are the Save Golden Lane Leisure Centre campaign. Since 1 April we have:

• Secured Rachel Blake MP's public backing
• Obtained an independent report from Swim England's Technical Director confirming the pool is not in poor condition and recommending it stay open
• Submitted a formal legal challenge through Leigh Day solicitors on equality grounds
• Forced the CCS committee to reopen its design decision following sustained campaign pressure
• Submitted a motion to the full Court of Common Council for 21 May demanding the centre be reopened

We have done all of this with no budget and entirely on volunteer time. Now we need your help to go further.

What we need your money for:

• Legal costs - £10,000
• Campaign coordination - £7,000
• Community Engagement - £5,000
• Campaign operations - £3,000

What your money will do:

What your money funds:

    •    Legal challenge — £8,000 — Leigh Day solicitors are managing a pre-action letter on Public Sector Equality Duty grounds and providing ongoing legal advice. The Corporation’s own equality impact assessment was completed six weeks after the closure decision. Legal pressure provides incentive to change course.

    •    Campaign coordination — £7,000 — this campaign is now a full-time operation managing simultaneous legal, media, political and community workstreams. It is run by a lead organiser with professional documentary experience at BBC, Channel 4 and Sky. Campaigns that don’t resource their organisers fail. We will not fail this community.

   •    Community engagement — £5,000 — building the community infrastructure that will outlast this campaign. This means facilitating structured engagement sessions with the user groups who lost their facility — Young at Heart elderly members, SEND children and families, GP Exercise on Referral patients, disabled adult swimmers, users and general members — to ensure their voices shape the refurbished centre. It also means establishing a formal Golden Lane User Group with a seat at the table throughout the refurbishment design process, and building the Friends of Golden Lane community so that when the doors reopen, there is an active, organised community ready to use it, sustain it, and hold those responsible for it to account.

    •    Campaign operations — £5,000 — press and media outreach, events, printing, communications and platform costs through the Court of Common Council motion on 21 May, the refurbishment design process, and the planning application.

Total: £25,000

We will publish a complete account of how all funds are used.

All donations are being sent to our fiscal sponsor GLERA’s bank account, with the Treasurer overseeing the ring-fenced funds. This allows us to build transparency, accountability and compliance into the core of our funding structure.

The facts that should make you angry:

The City of London Corporation holds £2.3 billion in assets and reported a £30.4 million surplus this year. The cost of keeping Golden Lane open for seven months while refurbishment was planned: £155,000 - 0.6% of this year's surplus.

Their own equality impact assessment was completed six weeks after the closure decision. It has not been signed by the Executive Director. The pool was independently assessed as not in poor condition two days before closure.

The promised alternative provision has materially failed. Elderly residents arrived at replacement venues to find no bookings existed. Cancer patients on GP referral have no confirmed exercise programme. Residents transferred their memberships to Ironmonger Row Baths only to discover they had been given an off-peak membership - and are charged £7.60 every time they want to swim.

We are not going anywhere. The fight to reopen Golden Lane and ensure this community has a proper say in its future continues - through the courts, through the engagement and planning processes, and through every democratic channel available to us. Help us keep going.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 10th July 2026 at 2:06pm