Staff were preparing the Abbey Meadow Outdoor Pool in Abingdon for an early opening for the current heatwave. This weather-dependent trial opening is the first – others may follow, depending on conditions and staff availability.
Better UK, who manage the pool, are offering this early opening at no extra cost to Vale of White Horse District Council. Booking times are available on the Better UK website. The first sessions run from Thursday, 19 June to Tuesday, 24 June 2025.
The Abbey Meadow splash pad and kiosk — also operated by Better UK on behalf of the council — opened at the end of May. Full seasonal opening of the outdoor pool begins on 19 July to coincide with the school holidays.
Councillor Andy Crawford, Cabinet Member for Leisure Facilities, said: ”This is such welcome news – and I’m sure it will be positively received by everyone who looks forward to enjoying the pool in the warm weather.”
Thermal covers are in place overnight to allow the water to be warmed and retain the heat.
Could Better UK run the rest of Abingdon as they’ve, obviously, got greater influence on what happens and when than the useless District Council who have only been good at asset-stripping the town. Amazed that it’s ‘news’ to Andy Craford, who appears to have been asleep on the job.
Glad to read this. Seems like madness to not open a swimming pool in June, July and August.
Heating could be solar panel assisted which would help energy costs
Heating could be free (or even profit making) if offered data centre cooling. It would require a can-do approach though. It’s been done elsewhere….
yepp, a data centre located just next to a river that constantly floods.. what could possibly go wrong…
Depends on what sort of data centre you’re talking about. Microsoft ran one (as a pilot) under the sea up in Orkney a few years ago utilising water’s natural cooling. The was a programme about it on Radio 4 called Rare Earth at 12:04 on 13/6/25 which is on iplayer if you’re interested which also has the guy who does the swimming pool data centres on it.
Heat could be extracted from the Thames plenty of it in the river although the EA don’t like you doing that. On paper 4 units of heat for every unit of electricity, in the real world maybe 2.9 to 1 but still good when you consider an electric fire is produces 1 unit of heat for every unit of electric.
But no, eventually we will lose the pool because it’s seen as a big problem and the perceived solution is to get rid of it not to reduce the size of ‘the problem’ to something manageable.
The Wallingford outdoor pool opened 24th May. The argument is always put that this happens because they don’t have an indoor pool whereas we do.
Unfortunately if it doesn’t “make money” then it has to go.
Does rubbish collection “make money”?
Does street lighting “make money”?
How does the pavement “make money”?
Does the council cabinet “make money”?
Will the new shiny new build council headquarters “make money”?
Does everything have to “make money”?
“Does everything have to “make money”?”… no, it just has to be ‘in budget’.