Fife Council budget spend of £19m in Inverkeithing agreed

Last year they had set aside £13.1m - with the hope they could get more funding to make it bigger and better - and at the budget meeting the Labour administration's move to put an extra £5.9m into the pot was agreed.

It was one of the budget proposals that was approved and, as well as a new pool, it will have a 3G astroturf football pitch, gym and studio.

Labour councillor Altany Craik said: "The £1.5m from the SNP budget doesn’t deliver a facility that will include a pool, dry side facilities and a synthetic pitch. Ours does.

"£5.9m is simply more, more investment in facilities for the future, more investment in a community facility that will be appreciated for years to come. It will be action not words."

Conservative councillor Kathleen Leslie said she was "unsure why the SNP have committed a far smaller sum" to a project they're so keen on.

SNP councillor David Barratt said he had asked the council leader last March to clarify where the new pool would be built and said the answer gave "no commitment on timescales or location".

He said that Labour's budget proposals, which stated they had committed capital funding for a new pool in Inverkeithing, was "categorically untrue".

He went on: "Labour were clear, 'we are keeping our options open'. There was no commitment to Inverkeithing but if there is now I welcome that. I don't think the community, however, will be so easily fooled.

"I've driven this campaign for six years and intend to continue that."

Cllr Barratt said officers had told him a new pool would take "three-to-four years to deliver" and added that the SNP's intention was to propose capital funding for the project after working with groups like Inverkeithing United and InCAS to "develop a genuine community asset".

He concluded: "We're just weeks away from the school closing and the council has no plan. That needs to change and it needs to change rapidly."

However, Labour councillor Patrick Browne said: "I am beginning to doubt whether some SNP councillors actually want to see a new swimming pool in Inverkeithing because they seem to spend so much of their time undermining the case for it.

"The budget is quite clear. The administration is putting an extra £5.9m in to create a facility that’s more sustainable.

"The SNP offer £1.5m. Cllr Barratt said there was no plan for the replacement of the swimming pool in Inverkeithing.

"I don’t know how he missed this but we had a verbal update in November.

"Cllr Barratt should know this as he chairs the area committee where we had the update. It was pretty simple.

"The update was we were going to keep the pool at The Wing open until the new swimming pool was put in place.

"Officers said the working assumption was the facility would be built on the north-east part of the Inverkeithing High School site, so it will be in Inverkeithing, and a paper would be brought to cabinet early this year to account for how it would operate.

"The commitment was already there and yet since then we have had some councillors trying to create the impression there's no plan when it was outlined in November."

Lib Dem councillor James Calder said: "With the coming closure of Inverkeithing High School, as well as the previous closure of Woodmill, we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in capacity in swimming pools in West Fife.

"We cannot expect everyone to fit into the Carnegie.

"That’s why we’re backing £5.9m in funding not only to build a new pool but also to build a gym, studio and 3G synthetic pitch. We should ensure that local residents have the best possible facilities."

Reform councillor Gavin Ellis said: "While the residents of Inverkeithing rightly want a full leisure and pool replacement, the residents from around Woodmill have already had their pool taken away.

"There was either incompetence or a lack of vision at the point the decision was taken to close the schools and build the joint campus.

"The council should have shown the ambition to build a new swimming centre to a Passivhaus design in Dunfermline."