Hello Tynemouth (and everywhere else in the world that our supporters come from!)

Hello Tynemouth (and North Shields, and Whitley Bay, and Cullercoats, and Newcastle, and Durham, and Manchester, and London, and Canada, and… well… everywhere else in the world that our supporters come from)!

We realise that it’s high time we updated you all on the project, firstly because we realise we’ve been pretty quiet for a while, and secondly because a bunch of you have been asking whether we have any news to share.

So, to cut a long (and fairly boring) story short, you’ll remember that we were hoping to be able to announce that we’d been successful in our planning application long before now. However, such is the nature of this kind of project, it’s taking a little bit longer (again) than we anticipated.

That’s almost exclusively due to the number of hoops we’ve had to jump through in terms of providing the information we’ve been asked to provide in support of our planning application. Not to mention doing this on a tiny budget, which means begging, borrowing, and pulling favours left right and centre.

Anyway, the list of information that we were required to pull together was huge. Trust us. And it kept growing, too, for reasons we’re still not entirely clear about.

But, thanks to an amazing effort from the team over the winter, we think we’ve pretty much covered everything we needed to cover – and we’ve again updated our application with North Tyneside Council.

You can see the full submission here: https://idoxpublicaccess.northtyneside.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=OFELOXBHHMF00

It’s quite a body of work, and it’s definitely worth digging through if you’re interested in finding out more about what takes to get a project like this off the ground. It would be especially useful to us if you could also add your comments in respect of this application to this page on the council’s planning portal.

Ultimately, our overall status is that we’re waiting for another response. And this part is always critical, because the success of this project rests heavily on us being able to secure planning consent.

So, fingers crossed. Yes, again. :o)

In the meantime, you might also remember our Community Share Offer that we opened up for pledges last year. Obviously, the delay in planning had a knock-on effect with the timing of this initiative, but it’s still something we will be launching in earnest once we secure planning consent. What you might not be aware of is that YOUR pledges have sailed past the £400k mark, and are currently sitting at just a few quid under £420k.

That is amazing – and wholly unexpected! – and if you haven’t yet pledged, please, please, PLEASE do so here: https://www.tynemouthoutdoorpool.com/communityshares/

Pledging doesn’t mean that you’re under any obligation to invest, but it does help demonstrate the depth of support around this project, which is already pretty huge if we do say so ourselves. And just as importantly, it could even help drive further funding!

Any comments or comments? Drop us a line below and we’ll respond ASAP.

Thanks!