Cold water poured on pool plan

From the Echo, first published Tuesday 21st Oct 2003.

SWIMMING club bosses in Dorchester today slammed plans for a new pool in the town as "woefully inadequate".

Proposals for a new leisure centre at Prince Charles' Poundbury village were unveiled for the first time on Thursday.

The centre would include a fitness suite, café and sports hall as well as a swimming pool.

But West Dorset Swimming Club chiefs said today that the proposals by the Wessex Sports Charitable Trust did not go far enough and merely mirrored the facilities at the existing Thomas Hardye Leisure Centre.

Speaking on behalf of the club team manager and swimming instructor Sean Baker said the club currently has more than 300 members and uses the current pool around 14 hours a week.

However, he said a lack of facilities at the Hardye centre prevented the club from hosting galas and members had to travel to Bridport whenever they wanted to do so.

"With a rapidly expanding population to cater for, I was amazed to see that the same old mistakes are about to be repeated as those at the existing centre. It is obvious that no one has bothered to talk to the clubs that regularly use the current centre.

"We have for years suffered the inconvenience and embarrassment of having to travel across to Bridport every time we want to hold a competitive gala. "We generally swim in galas fortnightly, throughout the 11-month long season, but can only run two or three of these ourselves - at Bridport.

"We usually have to rely on other local clubs such as Poole, Weymouth and Wareham to invite us to their pools for competitions."

He said the facilities at the proposed Poundbury pool were no better than those at the existing one. "As with the current pool, no provision has been made for spectators and there is inadequate space allowance for swimmers and officials around the poolside. It is only planned to build it 1.5m deep and this will prevent competition racing dives and the subsequent training.

"We also lack any storage or office space at THLC, and that has also been again ignored at the new centre. We had hoped we would be trying to persuade the planners to add more adventurous items and facilities, such as cabling ducts and scoreboards for electronic starting and timing. But there is very little hope of that now."

Mr Baker urged the team behind the proposals to rethink the plan and to consult with interested groups to find out what they would like to see included in the development.

"What our club wants may cost more money, but in a rapidly expanding local community we need to invest for the future, providing better facilities for young and old alike," added Mr Baker. An application for the new leisure centre has yet to be submitted by Wessex Sports Charitable Trust, which hopes to have the centre up and running by spring 2005, subject to gaining planning permission.

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