Sir – Whatever “extraordinary claims” Mr Smith thinks I’m making, his letter (August 23) amply demonstrates how little of the Campaign to Save Temple Cowley Pools he really understands.

The campaign’s detailed evidence for keeping Temple Cowley Leisure Centre open is on the campaign website: http://tiny.cc/savetcp or you can email: savetcp@gmail.com Mr Smith should quote his figures more carefully; the Labour City Council was forced by the Greens to admit at their last meeting that the costs of the proposed new pool, before a brick has been laid, have risen from the original low estimate of £3m to a total of over £11m. And the build cost is £9.2m, not the £8.5m he quotes. The campaign team is continually told, by people using it, how closing Temple Cowley will affect their health and well-being.

And while Mr Smith as chairman of the City of Oxford Swimming Club represents his few hundred swimmers, doubtless with many volunteers, the campaign represents the thousands of ordinary people who simply want a variety of exercise: from the fun of ‘just learning’, through fitness and well-being, to the chore and pain of rehabilitation and maintaining quality of life for as long as possible. These people feel powerless and abandoned by the city council.

We in the campaign, with continuing public support and the real evidence, volunteer our time to highlight how the full-time and very well-paid, executives at the city council are wasting our money and how they have got this issue completely wrong.

Nigel Gibson, Headington