I AM surprised Coun Galloway seems not to know that there are two pools on the Barbican site (Letters, June 10) and this fact makes his letter factually inaccurate.

When schoolchildren were having swimming lessons at the Barbican the main pool remained open to the public.

This could not happen with the Kent Street proposal because the children's pool is far too small for teaching purposes therefore either the children, or the public, will lose out.

For this reason Save Our Barbican supporters believe the "community" option will not be an adequate replacement.

The county-standard pool proposed before Coun Galloway came to power would have made a superb replacement, with eight, 25 metre-long lanes plus a 15 metre by eight metre teaching pool.

So how then did the "community" pool come to be preferred ahead of its superior "county" rival?

Answer: the leisure department carried out one of its "consultations" - 1,283 residents, after reading a cleverly-drafted statement obviously designed to extract a desired response, decided by 25 votes for the "community" option.

Come off it Coun Galloway, hard-won solution my foot.

If anything is in jeopardy it is by virtue of your council's cack-handed handling of the whole Barbican re-development.

EP Dickinson,

Anne Street, York.

Updated: 09:46 Friday, June 18, 2004