At yesterday evening’s full council. Councillor Len Laws asked about the subsidy the current swimming pool receives from the council. Councillor Pascoe’s answer to Len Laws question about annual subsidy for the Hythe pool was that the sums amounted to the difference between income and expenditure. Periods of long closure and cost of repairs had a major impact. Thus 2014/15 the subsidy was £287,980; 2015/16 it was £342,789; 2016/17 it was £501,284. He couldn’t come up with a figure for 2013/14 when the pool was open all year with no major repairs.
Save Princes Parade has never doubted that the current pool costs the council money and we would support a new facility in the right location. However we don’t think think Princes Parade is the right location for a number of reasons including that ground conditions make it a very expensive site to develop.
However the council has still not proven that the proposed new leisure facility will not also need a big subsidy. At the cabinet meeting also held yesterday evening the members voted to accept the recommendation which included commissioning a report of the business case for the leisure centre but no one raised the question of why this will be done after the submission of the planning application and after they have spent around £500k preparing that application.