Indymedia York

The City of York Council has launched a consultation into how it might spend £4 million from the conversion of the Barbican Centre into flats and hotels. The Council’s recent decision now means that none of the public sports and leisure facilities will be replaced on the Barbican site.

Survey options are either to refurbish Edmund Wilson Pool or build a new pool alongside the new sports centre at Oaklands. However, the Council surveys will only be sent to homes in Holgate, Rural West, Dringhouses & Woodthorpe, Acomb, and Westfield wards.

The important thing is now to vote on the 'Net if the Council didn't post you a survey form. Closes 5th December! Click here to say they should seek another site, in the city centre, er... like the Barbican site for instance. (Link opens in a new window.)

Opposition parties in York - Labour and Greens - are furious.

Fishergate Green Campaigner, Dave Taylor, said, “I expect that many people, especially those living near the Barbican, are getting used to the Council’s cavalier attitude toward consultation. People have been missed out of consultations before and the Council has claimed it was an accident, but this seems altogether more blatant. First the Council closes York’s biggest leisure facility, then it reneges on a promise to retain one small pool, now it seems to have just given up the pretence that people who live in the city centre should have any say in sports and leisure provision.”

Micklegate Green Candidate, Alan Swain, added, “Since the Council’s closure of the Barbican, Edmund Wilson has become the closest pool for quite a large number of city centre residents, and yet the Council clearly believes that our views are worth less when it comes to consultation. I can only see this as a form of gerrymandering to get the desired result from the consultation. It’s a sham.”