Penzance heated lido to close over winter due to rising costs

The geothermal pool will now close until May

The UK's first geothermal lido has announced it will close for the remainder of winter as the system was not as efficient as expected.

The Jubilee Pool in Penzance, Cornwall, had been expected to remain open all year but it said it would only open in warmer months due to rising costs.

The lido reopened with geothermal heating in 2020 as part of a £1.8m upgrade.

But the operator said the pool was "extremely expensive to run".

The facility uses underground heat to keep the sea water pool between 30-35C, allowing it to open all year round.

The heating works by extracting warm water from a geothermal well, then transferring that heat to the pool before "re-injecting the cooler water back into the ground".

The upgrade was partly funded by a community public share offer, in which 1,400 people provided £540,000. The remainder of the funding came through a mix of loans and grants.

However, its operator said an "unprecedented increase in running costs" including energy prices and last season's low visitor numbers meant its operating model was not financially sustainable.

'Beyond our control'

The lido will reopen between May and October 2024, with sea wall repairs and works to geothermal facilities to take place over winter.

Nicola Murdoch, chief executive of the pool, said the geothermal system was "not quite as efficient as we hoped it would be".

"The risk that comes with using innovative technologies and being the first of its kind in the country is it is not necessarily going to work as it might look like it is going to on paper," she said.

"We need to top up some of the heat ourselves, but obviously the extreme hike in energy costs that's happened in the past 18 months are completely beyond our control.

"It's cost us more than we anticipated in terms of running costs so we needed to take a proactive approach to ensure our sustainability and the future of the pool.

"Combined with that inefficiency in the system, it is just extremely expensive to run."

• Listen to the interview with Nicola Murdoch

She said the pool would "reshape our business model" to meet the "challenging financial circumstances we must operate within".

"We are committed to providing a sustainable community facility, and these actions are the best way of doing that," she added.

Penzance mayor Stephen Reynolds said the winter closure was disappointing.

"It came as a bit of a surprise but I can understand the decision," he said.

"From a personal point of view, the long-term future of the pool is the most important thing."

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