This is a disgraceful 'consultation' which gives local people two options:
1) Delay swimming for at least four years but possibly losing swimming altogether.
2) Start building a pool in a bad location for leisure and lose one of the main reasons that people use Forest Hill town centre. Plus build 60 apartments on the pocket park and around the swimming pool and Louise House.

In my opinion nobody should have to make such a decision as this, we are being asked to choose which foot to shoot ourselves in.

Question 16 is the key question:

The only way I have been able to answer this question is to delete the first four words of option 1. 'Postpone the project and...'


I believe there are ways to build a pool on the existing site within the budget (not that it is easy), but with the cost of building falling sharply, and with potential cross-subsidy from live/work development on Willow Way, it would be possible to build on the current site in roughly the same timeline as option 2. It might result in a small delay, but there is no reason to postpone this until 2012 for further consideration. Nor do I believe that the council will dare to do this in the run up to elections in a year's time.

My suggestion is that if you want to support swimming in Forest Hill on the existing site, as over 5000 seem to be saying, that you vote for option 1, even if this means changing the very poorly chosen wording.

There is expected to be an opportunity to vote online as well as by using to form, this seems to be the only way that all members of the family are able to vote (and it does include an age range for under 10). Please make sure all your family vote, including those under 10 who are likely to make most use of the pool if it is built in their lifetimes.