Madam, In response to your front page article last week regarding a petition against the closure and relocation of Ross pool to John Kyrle High School we need to put this in perspective.

As a local County Councillor and council appointed director of Halo Leisure I hope to be able to provide a bit more information.

Firstly I completely sympathise with the view of Mrs Southan and any other concerned residents and pool users. Ideally I would like to see the pool stay where it is as the town centre economy benefits, as pointed out by Mrs Southan, and of course it is in a very central and accessible location.

To be blunt the council is not awash with cash and maintaining and improving this great facility will not be easy over the next few years.

There is currently a feasibility study being conducted to see if it is viable to move the swimming pool to the high school. At this stage this is NOT committing anything, as local County Councillors we have ALL agreed to wait and see what the outcome of the study was and see where we go from there, somehow that has got lost along the way. The John Kyrle option could work because it uses existing land and private money from the sale of private land and if successful would bring an approximate leisure investment to the town of £6,000,000, where as the status quo brings no investment as it does not have the opportunity for private monies to be invested. (Unless somebody comes up with an equally creative scheme at the current site which cannot be ruled out but I know of none so far.)

I am not writing this letter to say that I am in favour of a move, there would be many compromises I'm sure if the pool did move, what I am saying is that we do not have all of the facts in front of us at the moment and as nothing is happening we might as well wait and see what the study brings.

At the moment if you ask someone "do you want to see the swimming pool close down and move up to John Kyrle?" I reckon most people would say "NO!"

If you asked "Would you like to see the swimming pool close down and move up to John Kyrle if it brought £6 million of leisure investment to the town and keeping it where it is brought little or none?" You might get different answers.

Again I must state that I am not trying to lead you one way or the other, we are told that there will be a public consultation when the facts are gathered and all I want to do is to add a little balance and perspective. I shall wait for all of the facts to be in front of me so that I can ask questions about public usage and access, parking and many others, consult and then form my view.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Cllr Andrew Atkinson,

Ross-On-Wye East Ward

07914211631

Madam, I was interested to read of the possibility of Ross Swimming Pool being moved.

Clearly, in these difficult financial times (where the Council can no longer afford to provide 'free' black bin bags that I seem to think I have paid for) moving the existing pool must be a much wiser move than knocking down the recently refurbished existing facility and building a brand new pool at JKHS at considerable expense (regardless of the non-existent parking at JKHS and the traffic congestion in that area at 'home time').

As a keen supporter of Mr Cameron's 'Big Society' I will of course be lending my full (and free) support to the relocation exercise – perhaps in carrying buckets of pool water up Ledbury Road. It will be an interesting spectacle.

However, the cynic in me wonders whether there may be an ulterior motive (or two) in relocating this fine facility to a less accessible part of Ross. The words 'Sell-off' and 'Supermarket' seem to creep into my mind. Surely not?

Ian Dewar, Ross