A COUNCIL has refused to invest in a swimming pool for Burnham after receiving plans from an action group last month.

Burnham’s Own Leisure Development (BOLD), made up of town residents keen to bring a swimming pool to the Dengie peninsula, submitted their vision for a new swimming pool and leisure centre for the town to Maldon District Council in April.

The plans had received support from Burnham Town Council and had taken more than a year to produce following positive feedback from a public survey.

However, the plans, which BOLD estimated would cost at least £2,000,000 to carry out, have been turned down by the district council, which has deemed the creation of a swimming pool as “unviable”.

Richard Holmes, Director of customers and community at Maldon District Council, said: “We have reviewed the report provided by the Burnham’s Own Leisure Development group and would like to thank them for providing this to us and recognise the time and effort taken in its creation.

“We can confirm that, at this time, the council’s position remains unchanged and we consider the creation and operation of a swimming pool in Burnham to be unviable and unsustainable.

“For this reason, the council will not be investing in a swimming pool.”

The proposed facilities were a 25 meter pool with six or four lanes with a training pool for lessons and water aerobics, with an additional space for a gym, fitness studio, café and possible climbing wall.

Funding possibilities were identified from Sports England, the National Lottery, Magnox who operate Bradwell Power Station, developer contributions and crowdfunding.

Mr Holmes stated the council would be open to future plans to create a swimming pool on private land provided the plans were deemed sustainable.

He added: “This decision does not preclude other organisations seeking to create a public swimming pool in private land.

“We recognise that this decision may disappoint some residents but we feel unable to spend public funds on this ongoing and substantial cost.”

A spokesman for BOLD said: "We are grateful that the council has taken the time to consider our report and acknowledge the work that went into it.  

"We appreciate that they continue to believe that having a swimming pool in Burnham would not be economically viable.  However, we understand this is based on population information contained in a 2010 report from Swim England.  

"We believe that since then there have been sufficient changes across the Dengie to warrant revisiting this using the latest information.  That is why we asked, in our report that MDC commission a fresh Facilities Planning Model report from Swim England to represent the true position in 2018.   

"It is worth noting that only Local Authorities are able to access this information.  We made it clear that if cost was an issue we were willing to fundraise to cover this.  

"MDC have declined to commission this report for us. 

"We are also aware that the MDC’s capital cost assessments are based on build costs significantly higher than those which we have received from specialist contractors. These differences can be a function of some procurement routes.

"As far as running costs are concerned, since the Blackwater pool was built, insulation levels required to comply with building regulations, have improved significantly and the pool tank now also has to be insulated (as of October 2010 regulations revisions).

"Glass U values have also reduced significantly in recent years and of course our proposal would feature high efficiency heat recovery and UV water treatment to reduce the amount of Chlorine required.

"We are obviously disappointed with the response at this time."