SWIMMERS in Blackbird Leys, Oxford, have been assured their pool will not close during the summer.

At a chaotic public meeting at the community's leisure centre last night, council bosses dismissed earlier suggestions that the pool could shut for the whole summer period to ease a staffing shortage.

But they admitted that the council would still be looking at alternative ways of making it more cost efficient.

During the public meeting, attended by more than 100 people, John Bolton, head of leisure for the city, denied that the pool was closing.

He said: "One of the things we are going to explore is the possibility of clubs having their own life guard."

He admitted that reducing the number of sessions had been an option. After the meeting, which produced fierce calls for the pool to remain open, he said: "Now we've got to go away and rethink."

He dismissed reports that the pool was to close for the summer as "misinformation" even though local people said the details had been posted up at the pool itself. Chairman of the city council's leisure services committee, Cllr Robert Evans, added: "Nobody was ever talking about closure. There's no question of this pool closing in the summer or winter or any other time.

"What we're looking at is being more effective with our staff in the summer period."

Chairman of Blackbird Leys Parish Council Molly Florey was not convinced by the assurances.

She said: "The poster in the pool definitely said it was closing. The staff were told they were going to be moving to Hinksey in the summer. There was no doubt about it.

"I'm still convinced this is a back door way of closing the pool permanently. It's not going to be open for all the sessions.

"There's groups like disabled groups and women's groups that could suffer."

The meeting was bombarded with comments from members of the public who felt strongly that their pool should remain open, including the First Blackbird Leys brownie pack, which regularly uses the pool.

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