When plans were first announced to save Saltdean Lido, I wrote a column doubting whether they would ever succeed.

A few days later, I met campaigners and was bowled over by their enthusiasm. I was also surprised at how well prepared they were.

Now the campaign has been given £2.3 million of new funding from the Coastal Communities Fund, which will help pay for a new plant room to heat the water, and to pay for a new volleyball court.

Members of the Saltdean Lido Community Interest Company hope to get more grants and believe they will be able to reopen the pool at weekends in June or July and throughout the school summer holidays.

An earlier grant of £440,000 from the Social Investment Bank will help pay for temporary toilets and showers as well as a pop-up café, while the group’s successful bid for £500,000 in the People’s Millions in November will pay for a reconstructed paddling pool.

The Lido will have swimmers for the first time in five years and summer attractions including an open-air cinema, theatre and festival events.

A decision on the first part of a bid for £4.9 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund is also imminent. It would be spent on restoring the Lido building, transforming it into a year-round leisure attraction, restaurant, community hub and heritage centre.

The campaigners hope that building work on the project could begin by the end of the year taking between 12 and 18 months.

There is still a long way to go. The total project costs have doubled to £10 million during the past year and the condition of the building has deteriorated badly.

The Lido volunteers have business experience. But it’s no great surprise to learn that none of them has ever run a swimming pool before and to say the least they are in uncharted waters.

But they seem to have support from much of Saltdean, a suburb with community spirit. Crucially they also have backing from the city council and from the local MP Simon Kirby.

Lidos were well patronised between the wars when people were first given paid holidays and few ventured abroad.

Brighton was blessed with two with the Black Rock pool being one of the best in Britain.

But they declined steeply once package holidays became popular and a bracing dip at Black Rock compared badly with the warm waters in Benidorm.

Black Rock closed in 1978 and was demolished five years later. It still has not been replaced while many other pools are no more. The long list of lost lidos makes melancholy reading.

Saltdean was one of the loveliest lidos and is a listed building. But it was never much of a commercial success.

The Second World War broke out soon after it had been completed and it took 19 years to reopen once fighting had finished. Then it limped along under local authority control, losing money all the time.

Private enterprise did not fare much better. The lido was revived thanks partly to money raised by the building of a nearby pub but it still did not last long. It has been a sad and forlorn sight for several years.

One reason why people used the lido for swimming in its early days was that the beach at Saltdean was polluted by being near the sewage outfall at Portobello, which often left untreated debris nearby. This has since been rectified with proper treatment and the building of a long outfall.

Owners of pools have to spend money like water. It is costly to provide several thousand gallons of clean water for bathers and hugely expensive to heat it.

Saltdean also suffers from being a suburb miles away from the main tourist spots of busy Brighton. Its market is likely to be mainly local.

I would love to see Saltdean Lido succeed and be brought back into life. There have been other miracles in Sussex to give the campaigners hope.

They include the Chichester Festival Theatre which flourishes half a century after its foundation in a small town.

Much closer to home is Brighton Marina, which survived the most tremendous troubles. The Komedia entertainments venue also defied all logic by overcoming obstacles that killed many similar ventures.

But I still think restoring that lovely lido is going to be a tricky task. The renovation bill will be huge and running costs will be daunting.

I wish the campaigners well and if they make it, I’ll be delighted that they have proved me wrong.