Lido campaigners end long battle

The pool at Hendy was built by volunteer miners in the early 1930s

Campaigners fighting to reopen a 75-year-old outdoor swimming pool have reluctantly thrown in the towel.

It was estimated it would cost close to £500,000 to get the lido at Hendy near Llanelli up and running again.

Residents fought for years to raise funds but the campaign committee has voted to end the struggle.

Carmarthenshire Council has pledged money to develop the site with a new artificial sports pitch and other facilities instead.

The pool had been closed since 2002 due to safety issues.

It will now be filled in and the buildings demolished.

Campaigner and councillor Steve Lloyd-Janes said the decision had been taken very reluctantly.

"Obviously it's been a long battle but if we are realistic at least we might get something out of it," he said.

"It was not the £500,000 that was the issue but the actual running costs because there are grants out there to possibly develop a new pool.

"It is somewhere where if you lived in the surrounding areas as a child you all went there in the summer, nearly everybody in this area learnt to swim there.

"If we have an astro pitch, which they say they will develop, it will be something that youngsters of today could use and obviously there will be a lot less maintenance."

Hendy Lido was just one of a handful of outdoor pools left in Wales.

It was built by volunteer miners and opened in the early 1930s.

The campaign to save it was first started in the late 1990s and has seen numerous public meetings and petitions.