St Dunstan's College wants an eight-lane 25m pool, climbing wall and sixth form centre in Catford, doubling its leisure space. Decision due 2 December.
St Dunstan’s College has filed a £10.5m plan to rebuild its leisure facilities on Stanstead Road in Catford, including a new eight-lane, 25-metre competition swimming pool, a climbing wall, a café and a new sixth form centre.
Application DC/26/145024 was received by Lewisham Council on 11 August and validated on 2 September 2026. A site notice went up on 3 September, and the council’s target decision date is 2 December 2026.
The scheme matters beyond the school gates because the college’s current pool is used well outside it. The planning statement says the college makes the pool freely available to local primary schools for swimming lessons, and runs the St Dunstan’s Swim School for children and adults, from pre-school through to adult swimming.
What is proposed
The independent school, on its site since 1888, wants to replace a pool it describes as past its useful life. Built in the 1950s or 1960s to an imperial length, it has only six lanes, no spectator seating, and changing rooms that are decades old and not accessible-compliant.
The application covers:
- a new eight-lane, 25-metre competition-standard pool with spectator and competitor seating, so the college can host galas
- the existing pool building converted into a junior sports hall
- the old field changing block extended and converted into a sixth form centre
- a central spine extension with a climbing wall, café and leisure centre reception
- refurbishment of the mid-1990s sports hall and fitness gym, plus studio spaces
- new male, female and gender neutral changing facilities
Together the works roughly double the leisure centre, from 2,258 to 4,456 square metres. The college puts the construction cost at approximately £10.5m, estimates around 260 jobs across the construction phase, and about 6 new permanent roles once open.
Community access: promised, but not pay-and-play
Community use of the college’s facilities currently runs on goodwill. The planning statement is explicit that there is no formal agreement securing it.
As part of this application, the college has submitted a draft Community Use Agreement, which it says would secure long-term community access to the new facilities and describes as “a significant planning benefit”.
The statement is equally clear about the limits. The development “is not for a public leisure centre”. There will be no pay-and-play use: access to the pool, sports hall, gym and classes will need to be pre-booked, and users will have to be members, which the college attributes to safeguarding and security on a working school site.
Neighbours and open space
The new pool hall would be built on scrubland and a bank west of the sports hall, taking 1,455 square metres out of land designated as Strategic Open Space, about 4 per cent of the 3.9 hectares of open space on the site. The college argues the land is unusable for sport and that there is no public access to its fields apart from holiday camps.
After concerns raised by neighbours during pre-application consultation, the pool extension was moved further from the shared boundary. At its closest point it would now sit more than 37 metres from the nearest residential boundary and more than 90 metres from the nearest house on Ravensbourne Park.
What it means for you
If your child learns to swim through a local primary school’s lessons at St Dunstan’s, or through the swim school, those sessions would eventually move to a bigger, accessible pool, and the draft agreement would put community access on a formal footing for the first time. What the agreement covers in practice, hours, prices and programmes, will be worth scrutiny while the application is live.
Comments can be made until the application is decided; our planning applications guide explains how to find the case on the council’s register and comment on it.
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