Will it ever end? The continuing saga of the Oasis Leisure Centre
Could the latest gambit by campaigners work or is it another delaying tactic?
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The never-ending saga of The Oasis Leisure Centre
Heartbreakingly The Oasis Leisure Centre, which once stood proudly at the centre of Swindon life, has been closed since 2020. As it stands, or falls if urgent repairs aren’t carried out soon, owners SevenCapital are still saying that they have plans to revitalise the entire site whilst keeping the listed dome - albeit without the much-campaigned for sports hall. They had originally set a date for the reopening of the iconic building as January 1, 2026, which will be the 50th anniversary of its original opening, but a planning application still hasn’t been put before the council, making that date completely unobtainable. And now with campaign group Save Oasis Swindon’s latest gambit, the planning application might not see the light of day until at least mid-summer. Jamie Hill reports.
By Jamie Hill
As journalists we had been eagerly awaiting a meeting of Swindon Borough Council’s planning committee which had been due to take place on 8 April.
This was to be the meeting when the revised plans for The Oasis Leisure Centre would finally be heard after months of consultations, with campaigners galvanising supporters as much as possible to put in their objections as to the lack of a sports hall, an objection shared by Sport England. The Wilts & Berks Canal Trust had also put in an objection to the plans to ensure that enough space was put into the plans to provide space for the canal if it was ever revitalised.
This meeting had already been delayed as Save Oasis Swindon had put in an application for the sports hall on the site to become an ‘Asset of Community Value’, which had until the end of March to be reviewed by the council.
This was turned down.
At the time Cllr Kevin Small, Swindon Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance, said: “We know this decision is not what the Oasis campaigners wanted to hear but, in line with previous independent legal specialist advice we obtained for a similar case, the nomination did not meet the required tests under the Localism Act.”
So the meeting was set for early April, but then, without a word, Swindon Borough Council removed the meeting from the schedule, with the next planning committee meeting set for Tuesday 13 May.
But now it transpires that Save Oasis Swindon has put in a second bid to the council, this time to make the entire leisure centre an ‘Asset of Community Value’.
The council has now until 17 June to make a judgement on this latest application.
Cllr Small said: “We are in the process of determining the second Asset of Community Value nomination for the Oasis.”
He didn’t explicitly state that the planning application would not be heard at the May planning committee but in all likelihood it probably means it won’t go before the council until this latest gambit by the campaigners is resolved.
Neil Robinson, who heads up the Save Oasis Swindon campaign, said: “They basically turned down our application for the ACV for the hall, with reasons which didn't really stand up.
“So we've put in a fresh application which encompasses the whole Oasis Leisure Centre, pool and hall.
“They argued that the Oasis had closed in the first lockdown in March 2020 and temporarily reopened, but this doesn't really stand up. (The ACV Criteria is a building has to have been in use within the last five years).
“As part of our new submission for the whole centre, I've included my own personal tickets showing I was using an open Oasis in both August and September 2020. We have also provided evidence that a local gymnastics group were using the Hall in October 2020. These dates are all under five years ago.
“The Council and SevenCapital also tried to blame the poor structural condition of the Hall, but no independent survey of the condition, or an assessment of how much a new rebuild would cost has ever been provided.
“If approved it would give the community a greater influence in what a future Oasis would offer visitors.
“It also adds further pressure on the decision makers to include a Hall in the new Oasis.”
So the saga of The Oasis looks like it’s not going to be resolved any time soon and it’s had more twists and turns than all of M Night Shyamalan’s films.
The Timeline
It was back in 2017 that £370m plans were unveiled to transform it into a leisure hub that would have been the envy of the rest of the UK. It would have had ski slopes, cinemas, a concert venue, shops, restaurants, and everything else you could think of.
Then covid happened and The Oasis closed. Never to reopen its doors again.
When, the announcement was made in November 2020 that GLL, the current operators, were abandoning the site and not reopening, campaign groups were formed to get owners SevenCapital to reopen the venue.
They cited that it was massively important for Swindon to have this leisure facility.
In March 2021, SevenCapital revealed plans for the site.
And then all hell broke loose.
Campaigners didn’t like it. Where was the dome? The famous iconic dome.
They then championed the cause of listing The Oasis with Historic England (although they didn’t put in the application for it to be listed themselves), despite the council stating that it would make it that much more unviable to reopen The Oasis with the current plans if that went ahead.
And then in December of that year, The Oasis won its listing bid. The dome was saved.
In May 2022, SevenCapital admitted that they didn’t know whether the venue would ever reopen as it had now become unviable because of the listing.
In January 2023, Swindon Borough Council planners approved proposals to restore the dome. The building’s owners, SevenCapital, submitted an application to seek Listed Building Consent for the restoration and re-glazing of the swimming pool’s doomed roof, while it continued to develop an outline scheme to reopen the Oasis.
In November 2024 SevenCapital revealed proposals including a detailed plan to restore and re-open the Swindon Oasis, including the dome, the wave pool and the slides. The proposals included outline plans for up to 707 new homes and employment space with the Oasis refurbishment as the first phase.
The proposals include a detailed application that will revive the much-loved former leisure destination by sensitively restoring the iconic dome structure and delivering a modern wave machine, state-of-the-art aqua play, and teaching lane pool.
Domebusters slides will be replaced with a new intertube slide complex, representing an upgrade to the previous slides.
At the time a SevenCapital spokesperson said: “Following feedback during the consultation on plans to introduce a new wave ball and associated curved pool, SevenCapital is no longer pursuing this format and will instead replace the existing wave machine with a similar format wave machine.
“Whilst there will still be the need to improve the overall setting of the wet side of Oasis, SevenCapital will also now look to retain the existing pool area, subject to necessary health and safety improvements.
“These changes have been carefully considered and can be achieved while reducing the cost of operating the previous pool setting and retaining as much of the original listed elements of the building as possible.”
The plans also include a new bowling alley, indoor golf, state-of-the-art gym, and café spaces, with new outdoor all-weather pitches, known as Multi Use Games Areas, replacing the sports hall, which after significant consultation with leisure operators was not deemed sufficiently economical to replace.
Damien Siviter, Group Managing Director at SevenCapital, said: “We have taken the public consultation very seriously and accommodated updates to our detailed application for the Oasis where strong feeling has been evident and where it has been possible - in line with advice from both heritage and planning consultants, as well as leisure operators.
“We are confident that the plans we have brought forward for the Oasis, along with the wider site outline, will deliver a renewed, revived and exciting destination that marries both the Oasis’ heritage with long-term sustainability so that future generations will continue to enjoy this much-loved venue.”
It’s definitely been a very complicated process and we just hope that the dogged determination of the campaign group pays dividends in the end, so that when we eventually see the planning application it will carry revisions that will keep everyone happy - including the sports hall.
At the very least it is essential to Swindon that the Oasis pool gets reopened some time this decade, as with each month that passes it’s another month that the town goes without an essential leisure facility.
A brief history of The Oasis
The Oasis Leisure Centre, designed by Peter Sargent of Gillinson, Barnett and Partners, was originally opened on 1 January 1976.
It cost £3 million to build overall and aimed to bring a bit of Hawaii-style paradise to Swindon.
With no concert hall available in the town, something that has needed to be addressed for decades, the sports hall doubled as a major venue for touring acts and held approximately 3,000 people.
The venue has hosted gigs by Talking Heads, Dire Straits, The Stranglers, Van Morrison, The Specials, Paul Weller, Madness, Alice Cooper, Ed Sheeran and The Kings of Leon.
Some 20,000 people crammed into the Oasis for the grand opening, where the entertainment ranged from synchronised swimming and sub-aqua displays to a British Rail Brass Band recital.
Within its first year of operation the American National Swimming Pool Institute hailed the Oasis as the world’s top residential pool of 1976 and awarded it a gold medal.
In 1979 the leisure centre celebrated its two millionth visitor in June.
For its tenth anniversary, in 1986, The Oasis installed three Domebusters water flumes for £600,000 which became hugely popular with Swindonians and tourists alike. The slides helped the centre briefly become Wiltshire's most popular tourist attraction, even above Stonehenge.
In 1991 the Oasis earned a footnote in British pop history when Liam Gallagher decided on the name for his band. They had previously been called the Rain, but Gallagher took inspiration from a poster for an Inspiral Carpets gig that was hanging in the bedroom he shared with brother Noel, which featured a date at the leisure centre. Noel, a roadie for Inspiral Carpets, would soon join the newly-named Oasis, who went on to define the Britpop scene and sell tens of millions of albums.
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Making a Scene
A Spotlight on... Atari Pilot
By Dave Franklin of Dancing About Architecture
Oil and water, they famously don't mix. Pineapple on pizza is a big no-no. Milk and alcohol…that never ends well, according to the doctor. And so it used to be with pop and rock music, at least in my formative years. (Yes, I'm old.) In those tribal times, you wore your musical hearts on your sleeves, quite literally in the case of rock and metal fans in their patched denim jackets. You displayed your colours proudly, usually via your uniform, whether punk or indie kid, clubber or goth, pop fan or progger and never the twain shall meet. (Although, to be fair, in my own defence, I was dressing like a goth, going to Marillion gigs and listening to Aztec Camera; you just had to make sure those worlds never met.)
But, thankfully, we moved into more enlightened times, a post-genre world. Although the pop world and the rock and roll realm were seen as opposites, we all know what opposites do...attract, and with such a changing of attitudes, such hopping of generic demarcations, such a blending of musical oil and water, such dismissal of the established rules, new forms of music arose, ones where magpie-like music makers scoured the sonic landscape to find whatever creative shiny things, whichever influence or inspiration caught their eye. I mention all this because Atari Pilot is a band that could only exist in such an enlightened world.
I can't believe it is 14 years since their debut album, Navigation of the World By Sound, first found its way into the public consciousness. I'm not even saying that they were the first band to mix pop hooks and rock groove, analogue instrumentation and digital deftness, but they, along with perhaps only Talk in Code, were the only ones doing it locally.
Navigation... was a refreshing and enlightening experience. It took rock away from the cliche and bombast it tends to fall into; it elevated pop music beyond its usual, lowest common denominator form. One spin of a track such as "Game Change" or "Rip The Floor Up", and you quickly realise something special was happening here. If pop music has always been transient, fashion-following, and even throw-away, this then was throw-away music that you want to keep forever! Quite a conundrum.
They are a band whose fortunes have been dictated by personal issues, particularly health-related, which is, quite frankly, not anyone else's business, so I'll leave it at that. So there have been long periods when Atari Pilot has been off the radar, but they always seem to come back stronger. Bursts of activity over the intervening years resulted in succulent singles such as the chill-out zone, end of the night, club vibes of "When We Were Children," the ornate electronic weaves of "Wrong Captain" and the optimistic "make the most of the time that you have on this earth" poignancy of "Train of Life."
And then, seemingly out of the blue, a new album, It's the Journey That You Can't Live Without, dropped last year, eleven songs that certainly put them back in the public eye. As well as the aforementioned "Train of Life", which kicks the album off (and from which the album takes its title), it saw Atari Pilot back doing what they do so well - mixing up rock, pop, indie, and dance, a gentle flexing of melodic muscle, groove and grace and grandeur, energy and clubland anthemics, running from controlled creative lulls to unabashed sonic crescendos, all in one place.
At one end of the spectrum, there were songs such as "The Rules Never Change" and "Only You I Miss", seductive, subtle, personal, yet relatable. At the other, "Waiting For the Summer to Fall" looks you in the eye and dares you not to dance, and "4X / 22" is that fist-in-the-air, sing-along anthem of an encore that is still ringing in your head as you queue up to get your chips in Mr Cod.
In an alternative timeline, Atari Pilot would be a big name; you would have seen them supporting Daft Punk or Maroon 5, caught them at Creamfields, or worked up a sweat to them in the dance tent at Glastonbury. They deserve to be bigger; there is still time.
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