Council boss refuses to pull plug on pool revamp
CHARLOTTE GREEN
HASLINGDEN pool’s restoration project has been ‘failed by the council’ according to Rossendale’s opposition group.
Acting Tory leader Coun Annabel Shipley asked Rossendale council’s leader at a full council meeting if it was now time to pull the plug on the regeneration project and sell the baths, which have been closed for four years.
Leader Coun Alyson Barnes said it was not ‘appropriate’ to wind down support for the project now – but said the council would review its position in early 2018.
The Free Press revealed last week that major repair works to the baths have been delayed again after a request by volunteers for increased council funding was turned down.
The group campaigning to bring the baths back into use, the Haslingden Baths Community Interest Company (CIC) – also known as Haslingden All People’s Pool Initiative (HAPPI) – is now aiming to raise £200,000 through a community share scheme to ‘unlock’ a further £100,000 of council funds pledged in 2016.
Coun Shipley asked: “Does the leader agree that despite HAPPI’s best efforts and intentions, the time has come for Haslingden Baths to be sold and redeveloped for new developments, and the money ring-fenced for a new pool at the sports centre?”
She added that the plans to reopen the pool were a ‘project that’s quite clearly been failed by this council’.
Addressing Coun Barnes she said: “You once said that there will always be a swimming pool in Haslingden while I am on this council.”
Coun Barnes replied: “And there may well be again. I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to wind down support for Haslingden at this stage of the game. The council is working closely with HAPPI whilst they prepare a community share offer in the next few months seeking to raise funding.”
She referred to how a similar proposal had saved the Dog Inn pub at Belthorn by bringing it into community hands.
She added: “We will review this position in the new year once we have the results of the community share process. It’s not easy or straightforward what they are trying to do.
“I do actually think this is a good response to what they are attempting to do.
“It sounds like a reasonable and achievable thing to be doing and I think we just carry on supporting, and I am confused that the Conservative group on this council want to stop doing that.”