Will Broomhill Pool get MUGA - ered?

I have recently submitted a letter to both the local newspapers, but, because it is rather long, it is likely to be edited. Below is the full text of the letter:

Dear Sir, On July 1st this year a national newspaper openly named one of the bidders for Broomhill Pool as Fusion Lifestyle. As a consequence of this declaration I tabled Questions at the "full council" meeting of Ipswich Borough Council, held later in July, to ask what timetable the Council had set for the consideration of bids for the pool site. It is now nearly a year since the council first advertised for Expressions of Interest and the original deadline for interested bidders was meant to be in February 2010; since that time the council has moved the goalposts quite considerably so that when the article headed "Rival bidders want to buy historic lido" was published, Councillor Andrew Cann is quoted there as saying "the bids were in by June". Certainly no-one can accuse the council of rushing to find a solution for the Broomhill Lido; "mothballing" this Grade II Listed building was originally meant to be an option for one year only, but eight full years have now passed and in the autumn of this year the steadfast campaign to save the pool will move into its ninth year. No-one would guess that the pool was Suffolk's top icon as voted for on Choose Suffolk's new website and that its recent history has been dogged not just by endless delays, but also an attempt to effectively sabotage all restoration by voting through measures to fill the pool in with sand and granular infill in the run up to Christmas 2008. The people of Ipswich need to be aware that it is extremely unlikely that there truly are "rival bids" for the pool site, The bid submitted by Fusion Lifestyle will be for the full restoration of the site, because Fusion already manage 52 sports, leisure and community centres, including 41 swimming pools, two of which are Grade II Listed. For example at Brockwell Park Lido in Herne Hill, the changing rooms have been imaginatively converted into fitness and dance studios, spa facilities, meeting rooms for youth groups etc. and these all-the-year round activities successfuly subsidise the lido itself. The so-called 'rival' bid for the site is unlikely to include the restoration of the pool, because Ipswich Borough Council very cleverly avoided this requirement when they advertised the pool site last autumn; bids were simply invited for recreational/leisure purposes and there is therefore a danger that Broomhill Pool could be "mugged" ie turned into a Multi-Use Games Area (MUGA). I hope that I am wrong, but nothing in the council's scandalous mothballing neglect of this particular asset gives me much optimism that they are treating the Fusion bid with the respect it deserves. This is our last chance to get an Olympic-sized swimming pool for the foreseeable future; IBC have already tried and failed to get a 50 metre indoor pool and in the current recession any hopes of this happening have to be shelved; but a 50 metre open air pool is very much within our grasp at a price that is 66% less than the one quoted in 2002. Back then, IBC said they needed £3 million to save Broomhill, now they need just £1million, because Fusion will take on responsibility for all other fundraising. One million pounds may still sound a lot, but there are pockets of money that IBC can call on eg at the last Executive meeting on 3rd August, the papers show that the balance of the unallocated budget for the Community Improvements Programme for the year 2010/11 was £266,210 and the balance of the unallocated budget for the Area Forums amounted to a further sum of nearly £130,000. This is a total of nearly £400,000 for a start, so it can hardly be beyond the council's reach to organise a little more. After all, if the restoration of Broomhill would not be a community improvement then what would? I hope the Council take this chance to say "yes" to Fusion and restore to the town the pool for which we have campaigned for so long, Yours sincerely

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