Here are the views of the mayor and two of our local councillors on the sudden and indefinite closure of Forest Hill Pools. The views expressed are those of elected political party members and do not represent those of the association. We have published them as part of the debate on the future of Forest Hill Pools.

Councillor Philip Peake (Lib Dem)

To put it mildly, the issues surrounding Forest Hill Pools are some of the biggest that I've had to address during my first year as your councillor. Many people, including myself, feel strongly about supporting this local amenity. The amounts of cash needed to do the job properly are large, even the costs for the Mayor's plan have jumped from his original back-of-an-envelope calculations of £1,500,000-£2,500,000 to £4,000,000.

Despite the difficulties of the situation, I'm very pleased that, together, we have finally managed to push the pools onto Lewisham's agenda. For a long time, local people have watched with concern as the pools fall into disrepair due to the council's neglect. At the same time, residents have received the impression that staff and politicians at Lewisham viewed them with irritation as a little 'local difficulty'.

After the council first decided to close the pools in 1996, the fight to keep them open was successful. The unfortunate collapse of Downham Pool was a stroke of luck for Forest Hill - although not so much for Downham: a decade later the replacement is finally under construction, though still not open.

Despite that successful campaign, neglect of Forest Hill Pools has continued over the last decade. Lewisham's ruling Labour group have showed no interest in them until my Lib Dem team raised the issue in last year's by-election. The Mayor's consultant recommended their closure, but in a decision shortly after the by-election he rejected that advice. Unfortunately, the promised open consultation - which the Mayor had described as a discussion with local people on what they want on the site - never appeared. For five months, the only people the Mayor and staff were consulting with were exactly those consultants who had earlier recommended closure.

When the public consultation finally started, everyone who came to speak to me about the pools was Ð without exception Ð disappointed with the options presented. Even on the narrow terms which the Mayor set (looking at the pools as a stand-alone amenity) both options had serious disadvantages.

Yet the reason that those terms are too narrow is that the project does not only affect swimming and fitness facilities. Redevelopment of Forest Hill is defined in Lewisham's own local planning strategy for the area as resting on three points: the Horniman Museum, Forest Hill Station, and the community site which includes the pools.

So why, we all ask, has Lewisham failed to take the initiative and plan in line with their own strategy? The pools require an injection of cash now, Louise House is empty and the Library will require repairs in the next 5-10 years. This is a classic case of a problem being also an opportunity and the decision to treat the pools decision as stand-alone misses those opportunities by miles.

The Council even refuse to promise that Louise House's future is secure: despite many requests for information by myself and my colleague John Russell, they say nothing beyond it is currently "surplus to operational requirements," and that a final decision will be made in the Asset Management Strategy (AMS) once the future of the pools is decided. Despite being told by the Cabinet Member for Resources (Cllr Whiting) that the AMS would be ready in March, I have now been told by the Executive Director for Resources that it won't be ready until June, well after the election.

I want to see a little more imagination being used, with which we can achieve a great deal more. Thinking holistically about the full site and the buildings could produce a genuine focal point at this 'point' of the planning strategy's triangle.

I'm sure we can all think of more than a handful of different facilities we'd like to see on the community site (please feel free to let me know your ideas). Multiple facilities would pull in different people at different times of the day; some people come for one purpose would stay for another and those services which were revenue generators would provide an increased income stream for investment in the project. With the small and under-used park to the side of the pools incorporated in a plan to landscape the public spaces around the whole site, a wonderful and value-for-money garden or open space could be created.

When the community site is the only one of the three sites, the future of which is under the the council's full control, why are they failing to come up with a comprehensive plan which meets the objectives of their own local development strategy, adopted just 3 years ago?

It is great to see that developers are finally putting money into Forest Hill in such places as Clyde Terrace and Bird-in-Hand passage. I suspect that their decision has more to do with the coming of the East London Line and commercial considerations than anything Lewisham has done for them. Yet there doesn't seem much evidence of talks with Network Rail (a semi-public body) or anyone else leading to any funding for the local development's strategy for the station area.

Then again why should Network Rail or developers invest if Lewisham Council doesn't seem to have enough confidence in Forest Hill to develop its own site? We must wonder why these obvious thoughts don't seem to have occurred to the Labour bosses at the Town Hall. After thirty-five years, perhaps they've just run out of energy? To the rest of us, not enmeshed in the bureaucracy of the Town Hall, the logical thing to have done would have been to study the future of the whole site. The failure to do this leaves me with a question: "Do they have another scheme which they need to keep secret? Or is it simple incompetence?"

Contact details:

e: cllr_philip.peake@lewisham.gov.uk

t: 020 8699 2430