Newcastle City Pool and Turkish baths plan copied in Manchester

Trustees from Manchester's Victoria Baths visited Newcastle's City Pool and Turkish Baths

Plans which saved an historic pool and Turkish baths are being copied by a group hoping to preserve a similar derelict building 150 miles away.

Manchester's Victoria Baths trustees visited Newcastle's City Pool to see how they can emulate its redevelopment.

The North East baths were saved by campaigners and taken over by sport and leisure charity Fusion Lifestyle.

Victoria Baths' Gill Wright said Newcastle was a "flagship" for making historic pools "fit for today".

"There is huge interest in buildings like these that provide a very different leisure experience to modern pools," she said.

Victoria Baths, which opened in 1906, got £3.4m for winning the first series of the BBC show Restoration

Opened in 1928, Newcastle's Grade II-listed pool and Turkish baths were closed in 2013 because of council budget cuts.

Campaigners successfully bid for them to be registered as an asset of community value last year.

Fusion Lifestyle was granted a lease and listed building planning permission and has started work on a £5m restoration of the historic building.

Newcastle's Turkish Baths were opened in 1928

Director of operations Anthony Cawley said it had "obviously been hard for councils to maintain historic leisure facilities".

"We hope that this partnership can be used as a blueprint for other pools across the UK," he said.