Scartho Baths campaigners deflated by pool decision

SAVE Scartho Baths campaigners expressed their disappointment after planners gave the green light to Grimsby's controversial new £8.4 million swimming pool.

The decision effectively seals the fate of Scartho Baths, which they have fought a long battle to save from demolition.

Last year, the group presented a petition with more than 5,500 signatures – later swelling to more than 14,000 – calling for the council to consider refurbishing the 50-year-old pool in Scartho Road.

Even after full council voted to replace Scartho Baths with a new pool in December, the group continued the fight, taking their case to the Audit Commission and the Local Government Ombudsman.

Speaking after yesterday's planning meeting at Grimsby Town Hall, Byron Miller said: "We did our best and I don't know what our next step can be. If I was a councillor there is no way I would spend £8.4 million to build that facility."

Fellow campaigner Stuart Jaffrey said the group's alternative proposal, to create a sporting hub around Scartho Baths and Barretts recreation ground, would have created one of the best leisure facilities in Lincolnshire.

Another campaigner, John Stanley, said the new pool would become a white elephant, adding: "On Sundays it will be dead. Stagecoach are not going to put a service on for 12 hours a day."

Addressing the committee, Mr Miller said the new pool was in the wrong location because road access was not good and public transport was "inadequate". However, Mark Cawood, the planning and building control manager at council partner Balfour Beatty, said Cromwell Road was the only site that was "currently available and sustainable for a pool location".

He added that Scartho Road was quite a "constrained site" and that there was no room to build a new pool alongside the existing one, meaning that there would be no pool in the town for around two years.

But after the meeting Mr Miller said that with proper scheduling, the existing pool could be refurbished in just three or four months.

He said: "There are different sections on the site, and you could do a particular section while all the others remained open."