Council chiefs to spend on Portishead indoor pool

Council chiefs are to spend £350,000 on upgrading Portishead's Parish Wharf leisure centre – months after saying they were too cash-strapped to help the town's open-air pool and tried to close it.

North Somerset Council's executive has agreed to use funds from its capital budget to give the leisure centre at Harbour Road a revamp.

Council leaders say they are confident the investment will attract more visitors to the centre and generate extra revenue.

The decision comes just six months after authority leaders tried to close the town's open air pool, claiming it cost too much to run.

Council bosses wanted to shut the pool, demolish it and sell off the site for development.

The Save The Open-air Pool (STOP) campaign to save the lido, backed by the Evening Post, was launched and in March this year, authority leaders agreed to hand over management of the pool to the newly formed Portishead Pool Community Trust.

News that £350,000 is to be pumped into improvements at Parish Wharf has angered trust bosses. They say that when they asked the council for money to carry out improvements and repairs to the pool they were told the authority was too cash-strapped to help.

Instead it was American TV star Ty Pennington who saved the day by carrying out a £200,000 makeover for Ty's Great British Adventure.

In addition a businesses and volunteers from the local community worked around the clock for six days – giving materials and labour free of charge – to get the pool ready to open in May.

When the council handed over the pool to the trust this March, it agreed to allocate £55,000, split over three years to help the trust in its first years of operation.

Portishead Open Air Pool trustee Roger Whitfield said: "It is very upsetting that after everything we have gone through to save the open air pool with very little money from North Somerset Council that it has found £350,000 to invest in Parish Wharf."

Parish Wharf Leisure Centre is run by DC Leisure – the same contractor that used to manage the open air pool.

North Somerset Council executive member for leisure, Councillor Felicity Baker, said: "This is an invest-to-save scheme.

"The investment will be used to upgrade the existing gym which will improve what is on offer to users and mean the gym membership can increase by 200.

"We will see a return on this investment where we wouldn't with investing in Portishead open air pool as this was not economically viable."