A SPECIAL meeting of the leisure and museums sub-committee requisitioned by four of its members to receive an update on the city council's take-over of the management of the swimming pools at Carnforth, Heysham and Hornby heard last Thursday that council officers had not met the anticipated deadline for converting the "in principle" agreement reached last Summer into written form.

The meeting learned that negotiations are not yet complete, and that the Independent-led city council had taken over the management of the pools on April 1 without a formal written agreement with Lancashire County Council being in place.

Closure of the pools had been threatened in Spring 1999 by the Labour-led Lancashire County Council and Conservative city councillors are leading the fight to ensure that the details of the final agreement do as much as possible to ensure the long term future of the pools. This fight is for the interests of the local people who use the pools now and will use the pools in the future, and also in the interests of the local people whose voluntary donations paid for the pools to be built some 20 or more years ago.

The principal problem to which the Conservative Councillors have drawn attention is that the Labour-led Lancashire County Council has not yet removed the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over the future of the pools which continues to allow them on a whim to bring to an end the city council's management of the pools. So long as such a provision remains a part of the "in principle" agreement, there remains a "blight" on any improvement to the facilities offered by the pools, for common sense tells us that no one will fund any investment which could be snatched away from them on a landlord's whim. If there is no prospect of improvement in the facilities under the new management of the pools, the only future for them is one of neglect and decline. We have already seen how Labour's local policy of neglect and decline has blighted the prospects for the future of the indoor and outdoor pools at the Bubbles complex in Morecambe and we don't want this scenario to be repeated elsewhere. That is why Conservative councillors have spoken out to impress on negotiators the need for the city council to have security of management tenure and as much flexibility as possible within the final form of the written agreement for the city's management of the pools.

Unless the written document makes further modifications to last year's "in principle" agreement, it will not have removed the continuing threat from the Labour-led county council, and the public should be aware that all three of the local pools could still be closed by a county council decision.

Councillor J R Mace

Kellet Ward