Rumours that Exeter’s Northbrook Pool is to be demolished have been sunk by the leader of the city council.
Phil Bialyk (Lab, Exwick) told a meeting of the full council: “It’s difficult to deal with the truth when the rumours are much more exciting.”
Writing on the city council’s website, Cllr Bialyk had explained that the ‘prohibitive’ cost of running the community pool had left the authority with no alternative but to close it.
Users mounted a high-profile campaign to save it, saying the council’s figures which claimed the pool was under-used were misleading.
The number of people using the pool was limited by the hours it was open, they said, citing evenings and weekends as times when the pool was closed when it could have been attracting paying customers.
They said they believed the closure had been a foregone conclusion from the moment the council began looking for ways to make up a £3.5million
Cllr Bialyk said it would cost more than £2million to bring the 100-year-old pool up to modern standards and almost £700,000 had already been spent on it.
The decision to close the pool was taken by the city council last month, with Cllr Bialyk saying it boiled down to ‘cold, hard facts’.
The pool is owned by the Northbrook Trust and leased by the local authority. When the lease is handed back, there will be talks over the possibility of keeping Northbrook open as community-run pool.
Cllr Carol Bennett (Green, Heavitree) asked: “Is there any truth to the rumour that it is going to be demolished?”
Cllr Bialyk replied: “We are not going to be knocking anything down. It is not our pool to knock down anyway.”
And, he said, the decision to close the pool would not be reconsidered.
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