The Isle of Wight council has declared that the future of the paddling pools at Ryde, Ventnor and East Cowes are under discussion.
We were alerted to it by an On The Wight reader this morning who emailed us, “Not content with offloading secondary education after their disastrous handling of it, and restricting children’s access to libraries, Messrs Pugh and Benyon have decided to refuse to fund the cleaning and filling of toddler’s paddling pools in Ventnor, Ryde and East Cowes.
“They really are sinking to new depths. (No pun intended)”
Cllr Brown: IWC can’t afford to run them
We contacted the council who told us that Councillor George Brown, cabinet member for the economy and regulatory service, says that the paddling pools fall into the category of local amenities that they’d like to continue to run, but can no longer afford to do so.
Citing “the challenging economic environment”, George says that the council’s limited resources have to be focused on priority areas and services the council is legally bound to provide, such as education and social services.
Looking for others to run them
He says, “To that end, we are looking at whether town and parish councils and other organisations are better placed to run and invest in some local amenities that we would like but can no longer afford to do.
“We are talking to some of them about taking on the running of paddling pools in Ryde, Ventnor and East Cowes so the pools can stay open for future use.”
What is the cost of running them?
We’ve asked the council how much each of the paddling pools costs to run and await their figures.
In the meantime, we looked up on our Armchair Auditor (The site tells you what the council has been spending money on) and found out that East Cowes paddling pool had under five thousand pounds worth of invoices against it in the year 2010/11 (£4,264.67 to be exact).
Ryde Paddling Pool: £2,753.45 in 2010/11
Ryde Paddling Pool was even lower with £2,753.45 of invoicing against it in the same period. No figures were listed for Ventnor’s paddling pool.
These invoices don’t include the council officers costs for filling or maintaining the paddling pools during the season. Those figures will hopefully be delivered to us by the council on Monday.
Image: foilman under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license
