Council boss offers Brynaman pool campaigners some hope (From South Wales Guardian)
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Council boss offers Brynaman pool campaigners some hope
7:30am Tuesday 10th August 2010 in News
THE deputy leader of Carmarthenshire County Council has pledged the authority will do its utmost to ensure Brynaman swimming pool re-opens next year, Cllr Kevin Madge spoke out after the Guardian exclusively revealed that the future of Wales's only surviving lido had been plunged into doubt because County Hall could not meet the £20,000 repair cost caused by frost damage.
"The way local government is going we could be looking at cuts ranging from £10m-£30m over the next three years," he said.
"Eighty per cent of our funding comes from the Assembly, but we will be doing our best to ensure Brynaman swimming pool opens next year."
Responding to a suggestion by the Guardian that the sum of £20,000 was "chickenfeed" to the local authority, Cllr Madge replied: "Twenty thousand pounds is a huge amount of money as far as our parks department are concerned."
But he was at a loss to explain why the authority had not divulged their reason for not re-opening the pool almost until the start of the school summer holidays.
Meanwhile, council chiefs have apologised to the Brynaman Swimming Pool Association for not keeping the volunteers informed while conceding they had left it too late to consider what repairs were required.
Ian Jones of Leisure and Tourism said that as compensation to local children and families for the loss of this summer facility, the Council offered to put on a bus service to take them to Ammanford pool on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays during August.
The Council agreed with the BSPA that the pool would be great loss to the community, but everything would be done to ensure it opened next year.
Comments(4)
Sally Wainman
says...
9:09pm Tue 10 Aug 10
The prosecution (and persecution) of Mr Humphreys over the mill at Llandybie has cost approx. £50,000 so far and yet the council are not saying "this is money we just don't have" when it comes to indulging their passion for aggressive litigation. Public money can be misused in this way, so that the council can make one man's life an utter misery, but when it comes to finding a much smaller sum to repair a community swimming pool then suddenly the funds dry up.
Sally Wainman
says...
8:15am Wed 11 Aug 10
They didn't want the Brynaman Swimming Pool Association to have time to organise a concerted protest or do any major fundraising and therefore presenting them with a fait accompli just nine days before the expected opening date was their chosen method of closure.
Sally Wainman
says...
8:31am Thu 12 Aug 10
The aim of the Community Regeneration team is to 'empower' communities:
"The aim is to strengthen the identity of communities,
increase access to services, provide improved leisure and
cultural facilities and support businesses so new jobs are
created."
Why then is some of this nine million pounds not available to safeguard the leisure facilties in Brynaman? The Brynaman Lido is most certainly an important part of the community's identity, so surely the Regeneration Team could have found £12,000 to save the pool this year.
Sally Wainman says...
9:00pm Tue 10 Aug 10
Vague reassurances about the future of the Brynaman Lido will be dumped by the Council as soon as they feel media interest has died down.