UPDATED EVERY
FRIDAY
Last Update:
Friday 28th October, 2005
 
PUBLICATION
By RICHARD OSLEY and CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
  
ISLINGTON
WEST END EXTRA
 
SECTIONS
MUSIC
THEATRE
RESTAURANTS
HEALTH
 
NAVIGATION


With Google
 
 
 
Swimsuit protesters call for guarantee over baths

As campaign mounts, leisure boss says: ‘We face costly challenge’


Making a splash: (from left) Brenda Humphreys, Philip Thompson and Omar Faruque Ansari
PROTESTING swimmers stripped down to trunks and swimsuits outside Kentish Town baths on Tuesday as their campaign to save the pool gathered momentum.
Campaigners are demanding that leisure chiefs come clean over plans for the pool in Prince of Wales Road.
At the demonstration on Tuesday, younger pool users held up placards urging Camden Council to safeguard the baths’ future.
Pool user Philip Thompson, 23, who is organising a petition protest, said: “We feel we are being kept in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen. We want the council to guarantee that the pool will not close.
“We are taking this petition door to door in the area, and are asking shops to take it so everyone has the chance to sign.”
Another pool protester, Omar Faruque Ansari, a Lib Dem candidate at next year’s council elections, added: “Generation after generation has used this pool. It is a gift. It would be sad to lose that gift. The government has the money. It should spend it on the baths.”
Senior Labour councillors have remained ominously quiet on the issue in the face of hundreds of worried inquiries and a growing New Journal postbag.
Earlier this month leading Labour councillors revealed they could ditch plans to refurbish the crumbling building.
Repair work has been a long-term pledge for Labour but nobody at the Town Hall is willing to commit to parting with the cash needed to save the pool.
The pool is plagued by boiler faults and maintenance problems. Council officials have already conceded that further breakdowns could force its closure even before refurbishment could begin.
Labour councillors say even a basic patch-up job would leave a £17 million dent in the Town Hall’s coffers. A final budget decision is due in January.
Swimming teacher Brenda Humphreys, 57, who lives in Leighton Road, Kentish Town, said: “I desperately want to see schoolchildren learn to swim for the Olympics. It’s a government target that every child should be able to swim 25 metres at the age of 11. How can they when the swimming pools keep closing?”
Labour leisure supremo Councillor Phil Turner said this week: “Camden Council recognises that residents expect high standards in a modern leisure centre and that investment in Kentish Town Sports Centre is needed to provide this.
“The extremely costly challenge we face is how to provide a first-class facility within a listed and ageing building that will meet the needs of everyone in the community but is affordable for the council.”



Get to work on your tannin

BORDEAUX winemakers – long regarded as the world’s greatest – are in trouble. Government health campaigns and strict enforcement of French drink driving laws are causing a dramatic decrease in French wine consumption.
FULL STORY



It all comes down to cash

AFTER confessing to not being able to swim the other week, I was deluged with offers of help.
FULL STORY
   
   
 
All content © New Journal Enterprises, 2005