Where’s our pool?

RESIDENTS of St Neots will know that it is three years since our council bulldozed the open-air swimming pool in Huntingdon Street. Residents will also know that its right to do so is very questionable, since the pool was bought by the people of St Neots through public subscription.

Since the pool was destroyed by the council, the area has been very usefully deployed as a gated wasteland with no public access permitted.

As part of the triennial celebrations of this event, the council has made two significant announcements. First we learn that the swimming pool area has been sold off to its developer friends for high density housing. This outcome was predicted by the local Labour Party at the time. Councillor Paul Ursell informs us that St Neots will get its swimming pool.

However, true to form, he gives us no idea how or when - presumably we will just have to wait until the cows come home.

Secondly, because of its abject failure to invest money in our existing public pool, the district council has announced that the swimming pool at St Neots Community College is to be closed for six months. As a result of the council's actions, those in St Neots wanting to use a public swimming pool will be compelled to drive to Huntingdon, St Ives or Ramsey in the cold and wet - at their own expense, of course.

The one positive thing to come out of this whole wasteful, destructive and incompetent fiasco is that more and more people in St Neots are beginning to realise what most of the rest of the country realised some time ago. Conservatives, along with their Lib Dem allies, can't be trusted to run public amenities properly.

It is in part because of this that the Conservatives have been out of national office for over 10 years. Surely it is time to deliver the same fate to them here in our town.

BILL O'CONNOR, Chamberlain Way, St Neots