Twenty Labour MPs are pushing the government to require water companies to build and repair public lidos — outdoor swimming pools — across England. The campaign launched on 4 July 2026. Andrew Pakes, the MP for Peterborough since 2024, brought together colleagues from constituencies that have lost or are losing their local lidos. The group released a report called "The People's Pools: A Labour Plan to Build Lidos" written by the Fabian Society to explain how this would work legally.

What the Plan Asks For

The report calls on Andy Burnham, who oversees water policy, to make two changes to the water bill being prepared. First, water companies would have to help ensure people can safely swim outdoors in their area. Second, water companies would have to work with local councils to guarantee a minimum number of lidos, whether newly built, refurbished, or natural swimming lakes.

Why ask water companies? Because they already dump sewage into rivers and seas, which makes outdoor swimming dangerous. Local swimming groups have pointed out that pollution is one reason public swimming pools have disappeared. The campaign says water companies should pay to rebuild what pollution has damaged. Manchester is already building a new lido, which the report highlights as proof this can work.

Where the Lidos Went

Britain had more than 300 lidos in the 1930s. By 1990, fewer than one in three were still open. Most were abandoned or torn down, according to The Guardian. This happened because councils ran out of money, people started taking cheap holidays abroad instead of swimming at home, and indoor swimming centres became popular in the 1970s. Almost nobody debated this at the time — the pools simply closed.

The few that survived did so because local swimmers fought to keep them. Tooting Bec, the UK's largest outdoor freshwater pool, was saved in the 1990s by volunteers. Peterborough's lido, which celebrates its 90th birthday this year, nearly shut down just two years ago. On a single bank holiday Monday in late May, 1,500 people used it.

This campaign has support from both political parties. Conservative politician Penny Mordaunt spent years campaigning for a lido in Portsmouth called Hillsea. She even appeared on the TV show Splash in a swimming costume to raise money for it. Hillsea finally opened in 2026. But that took decades of effort from one person. The campaign wants to change this — instead of waiting for individuals to save each lido, the law would require it to happen.

What Comes Next

The water bill is being updated anyway because water companies have failed to maintain infrastructure and have paid too much money to shareholders instead. Adding a requirement to build lidos would be relatively cheap and very popular locally.

But there is a practical problem. How would anyone check that water companies are actually building lidos? Who decides what counts as a proper pool? And how does this fit with existing rules about what water companies can spend on big projects? The report says councils and water companies should cooperate, but cooperation without consequences often does not work.

Twenty MPs is a strong voice but not the whole Labour Party. The real test will be whether the minister agrees to include this in the bill when it is written, or whether MPs have to propose it separately — which is harder to pass. Either way, the Fabian Society has given the campaign a serious plan to move from saving one lido at a time to a national approach.