Councillors choose site for York’s £4.8m new swimming pool (From York Press)

Councillors choose site for York’s £4.8m new swimming pool

10:00am Wednesday 20th December 2006 in News By Gavin Aitchison, gavin.aitchison@thepress.co.uk

A NEW swimming pool is set to be built at Oaklands School, after top councillors gave the development the thumbs-up.

City of York Council's executive voted to back a £4.8 million pool next to the sports hall at the Acomb school.

Officers will now prepare a planning application, and work could begin on the development next year.

The decision follows a consultation process, in which 60 per cent of respondents backed the Oaklands option, ahead of a refurbishment of Edmund Wilson Swimming Pool, or building a pool on an alternative site.

The consultation had been criticised by opposition councillors because it involved only those people living in the west of the city, but council leader Steve Galloway said it was extensive, and the results were conclusive.

He said residents in east York would be consulted when it came to refurbishing Yearsley Grove pool and developing a competition-standard one at the University of York.

He said the council's first choice of building a pool beside the Barbican had been thwarted by legal action by protesters.

But he said: "Although this is not our first choice of the way forward, in reality this is a way that will be much more sustainable in the long term."

He said with Waterworld, the new pool at Oaklands, and that at the university, there would be a great variety of facilities.

The pool at Oaklands will later become part of the new York High School campus, but Coun Galloway said the school would not get any priority use over the public.

Backing the proposal, executive member Carol Runciman said: "I welcome this decision. There is a long tradition in the city of schools with pools for school and resident use."

She added: "I would not want people to stop swimming, and I welcome this decision.

"Putting it within Oaklands enlarges possibilities for community use."

Coun Galloway said Edmund Wilson's boiler and tank had come to the end of their life, making a new pool necessary.

Edmund Wilson will remain open until the new pool has been built.

The consultation saw the council leaflet 37,000 homes in five wards in west York, hold two public meetings, and invite comments online.

There were 1,907 responses, 59.7 per cent of which backed the Oaklands option.

The executive formally backed the proposed agreement with the University of York to provide an eight-lane competition-standard pool, and called on officers to press ahead with the plans to refurbish Yearsley Grove as soon as possible.

Campus pool to be one of finest in the country'

THE proposed pool at the University of York could give the city's swimmers some of the best facilities in the country, according to City of York Council leader Steve Galloway.

Coun Galloway said it was hoped to develop the facility in partnership with the university, using money from the sale of the Barbican.

The new pool would be subject to an agreement being reached with campus chiefs and planning permission being obtained, but Coun Galloway said if it was developed as hoped, it would be a first-rate facility.

Speaking at yesterday's meeting of the council executive, he said: "As far as the university is concerned, we will have a competition-standard pool with spectator facilities.

"It will provide the city, per head of population, with probably the best of facilities any city in the country." He said the benchmark would be the facility at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, but hoped the York pool would be even better than that.