PROTESTERS are gearing up for new campaign to save Purley swimming pool after the Labour council dropped bombshell news on Wednesday that it will close in April.
Already Chris Philp, the Conservative prospective Parliamentary candidate for Croydon South has launched an online protest petition.
Opponents of closure are also saying the money that will be saved -around £1 million in the next financial year - is a tiny amount when put alongside the benefits the pool brings to the community.
The closure announcement forms part of the Labour administration's first budget which will be presented to the scrutiny and overview committee next Wednesday.
Backing the move this week, council leader, Tony Newman said the cost of carrying out maintenance work needed to keep the pool functioning would be £781,000 in the next financial year.
Another £200,000 would have to be spent on running costs.
Councillor Newman said: "At a time when we are having to make very tough financial decisions we cannot justify the upkeep of Purley pool, a building which has been neglected over the years."
Keeping it open was even harder to justify, he said, when "there is a new pool five minutes down the road at Waddon."
Under the proposals the gym facilities at the pool will be kept open while plans for a wider regeneration of Purley are worked up.
Cllr Newman stressed the pool site would be a key element in the overall regeneration scheme and negotiations were starting with relevant land owners to set that regeneration in motion.
Any regeneration scheme, Cllr Newman said, would be likely to include homes, shops and leisure facilities, although probably not a new pool.
He said: "If, of course, a commercial company showed an interest in building and running a pool that could happen."
Cllr Newman added he it would be wrong to keep spending money on maintaining the pool, which would be coming down anyway as part of a regeneration which he believed would be welcomed by the people in the south of the borough.
That argument was not cutting much ice in the area this week.
Fred Wallis of the Save Purley Pool campaign, said 250,000 people and 11 schools used the pool every year.
He said: "I just don't believe the pool at Waddon would be able to cope with the number of people who might want to go there from Purley; it only has around 30 parking spaces."
Waddon was even more inaccessible for people from Coulsdon, Kenley, Sanderstead and Selsdon who a present used Purley.
Mr Wallis said: "We have been going since 2007 and we will get active again.
"Purley does need regenerating but I wonder how many people would want to go Purley if it wasn't for the swimming pool."
Councillor Steve O'Connell, Croydon's London Assembly member, said: "I am absolutely disgusted but unfortunately not completely surprised by the decision.
"Labour has been spraying money around for its favourite causes and something had to give."
Cllr O'Connell said the previous Conservative administration had recognised how many people relied on the pool and had been committed to keeping it open.
He said the Purley regeneration plans were "pie in the sky" at present.
Cllr O'Connell said: "To do away with a popular local facility on the promise of some regeneration that might or might happen some years hence is a poor excuse."
Expressing his "complete outrage" at the closure plans, Mr Philp said: "For such a small amount of money they are closing down a valued community facility."
