Th, Mar 15, 2007Mayor approves without positive advice
Yesterday Wednesday 14th March, at the Mayor and Cabinet meeting, we explained Steve Bullock, the Mayor of Lewisham, the reasons why he should reconsider the specifications of the new pool that the Coucil wants to build to replace the Ladywell Leisure Centre.
In spite of the serious arguments clearly put in front on him and in spite of being unable to find any officers' advice telling him that we were wrong he decided to ignore our advice and approved the papers put in front of him.
Our argument was two-fold:
- the Leisure Needs assessment and the estimate of population growth used to calculate the size of the pool contain world-class errors and should be re-avaluated to consider the impact of various elements that had been left out, most noticeably the redevelopment of the Town Centre that will bring thousands of new residents on the doorstep of this new Leisure Centre and;
- the consultation for the new pool carried out by Lewisham Council was unlawful because it only presented the public with some of the options available. We also informed the Mayor that the consultation report that he had noted on 10th January contained a very serious misrepresentation as all of the consultation questionnaires submitted online did not make it into his report. Had they been included into the calculation the result would have been decidedly different.
The Mayor asked the officer from the legal department to advise him on this but unfortunately for him she was lost for words. Another officer reminded him that he had approved those papers on 10th January. That was a strong argument for Bullock.
On the specification of the pool the Mayor also needn't much convincing. Nobody could say anything about our argument so he pleaded with his officers "can anybody confirm that 25 m is the standard measure for Sports England?" he yelled. "Yes Mr Mayor" said one voice from the Community department "I can confirm that 25 m is the standard measure according to Sports England".
We had not argued on the length of the pool but that was enough for Bullock. He gave the nod.
