Let us hope that the Mayor actually makes a decision on Thursday to move towards building a new swimming pool/leisure facility on the existing site on Dartmouth Road. It?s clearly what local people want. Another period of ?consultation? would be disastrous.

What I find simply unacceptable in all of this is the shoddy way that the stakeholders group has been treated. The stakeholders are constantly told that they are there to be consulted. But no consultation actually takes place. Instead, the stakeholders are handed down ultimatums by the officers.

At the M&C meeting on 18 September, according to Michael?s notes, the Mayor promised that LBL would keep the stakeholders group up to date with all aspects of this scheme.

So what actually happened? Officers ignored the stakeholders group until two weeks ago (5 February), when they met to present them with the three options we now have before us, giving them no more than eight days to come back with a response.

Surely officers must have known of the option to move the pool to Willow Way months ago. They could have put this idea in principle to the stakeholders group and other locals at that time. They would then have discovered that this idea was a complete non-starter, and saved themselves a great deal of time and effort.

Decide to build on the existing site now Steve ? it?s what people want! If you need to work on details of the layout of the scheme, take the stakeholders group seriously and consult them ? that?s what they are there for.