I SHOULD like to respond to the latest letter from Stuart Marshall of Poole (Daily Echo, July 30) calling for a swimming pool to be built at the expense of the council tax payers of Bournemouth, somewhere near the seafront in the centre of town.

Given the longer term ambitions for the Pavilion Gardens site, this is not something that the council can really contemplate as the capital cost would be prohibitive and I am sure the substantial revenue subsidy required would be unaffordable. In turn, this could only be achieved to the detriment of other front line services which Bournemouth residents rely upon. Instead, we have already begun the early stages of transforming the seafront at Pier Approach, and the rest of this area will eventually be redeveloped as part of the council’s agreed long-term strategy. I hope this will include a variety of attractive facilities for residents and visitors. However, this will only be achieved out of the development profits from other sites such as the Winter Gardens, which is why we are putting a short-term leisure facility in place on the Waterfront site for the next few years.

In terms of the recent article about the swimming pool at the BIC, Mr Marshall may recall that prior to its closure, I and others in Bournemouth supported its retention, but we lost the argument and it was closed in 2003/04. We cannot turn back the clock, which is why instead we have invested so heavily in Bournemouth’s four swimming pools at Littledown, Pelhams, Stokewood and Queens Park. These facilities are among the best available to the public on the south coast and are positioned across the town to make them accessible to as many Bournemouth residents as possible. There are also a number of leisure clubs in the centre of Bournemouth which offer membership to those who do not want to use these excellent public facilities. In addition, many local hotels have their own swimming pools for their residents.

I explained in some detail the background to Bournemouth council’s plans in my response to Mr Marshall’s letter back in June, and space will not permit me to repeat those again in this letter. However, suffice to say that our ambitious plans will take time to deliver, perhaps five to 10 years, but in the shorter term we have a responsibility to provide a high quality visitor experience on the Waterfront site, whilst maximising revenue which must contribute towards services for the residents of Bournemouth as our first priority.

CLLR JOHN BEESLEY

Leader of Bournemouth council,

Bournemouth Town Hall