‘No business case’ for splash pool says leisure councillor
A SPLASH pool for toddlers is uneconomically viable according to the Executive Member for Environment.
The comments were made in reply to a question asked by a member of the public at last Thursday night’s Executive meeting of Wokingham Borough Council.
Protesters created a 700-strong petition urging the council to reinstate a splash pool into plans for the new Carnival Pool, which will be built on the site of the old one.
Resident Indy Sinhu asked Cllr Norman Jorgensen: “Why have the Council chosen to ignore the concerns of a growing section of our community?”
Cllr Jorgensen said: “We are not ignoring the concerns of those who have signed the petition but we aim to provide a balanced range of facilities for our 165,000 residents across the Borough. It is also our aim to have these facilities be selffinancing, in that the user fees will pay for the capital and the running costs.
“So far I have not seen a business case for a beach pool at Carnival Pool that would pay back the investment in it. The forecast number of users is too low to allow it to pay for itself in that way.”
He added: “At the moment unfortunately there does not appear to be sufficient demand to make a beach pool a high priority in our spending plans.”
Cllr Jorgensen stressed that the teaching pool will have a moveable floor so that the depth of water can be adjusted.
“These new facilities are very flexible with their use to allow disabled people to use the facility as well. I have been and seen the one at Hart and it is quite impressive.”
He continued: “In terms of the usage we have surveyed the usage of the current facility over the last week or so and I was quite surprised actually at the outcome of that. In the period Monday to Friday last week there was less than 20 people used that facility on any one day.
“Unless you can convince the Council that hundreds more people are going to be using such a facility then I think it is unlikely that we would be looking to build such a thing.”