PEOPLE living closest to York's Barbican Centre failed to receive a vital public consultation document about its future, campaigners claimed today.

Members of the Save Our Barbican (SOB) campaign say they had conducted a door-to-door survey of residents in Barbican Road, Heslington Road and nearby streets.

Of more than 100 householders who were at home and responded to the survey, an overwhelming majority had said they never received a council leaflet last spring, entitled "York's Swimming and Barbican facilities - tell us what you think".

Now SOB says it is planning to lodge a complaint with the Local Government Ombudsman over the consultation process, regardless of whether or not the Barbican redevelopment proposals win the provisional go-ahead at a planning committee meeting on Thursday.

The leaflet was sent out to tens of thousands of households across York last year by City of York Council, as it sought to decide what to do with the Barbican, along with the Edmund Wilson and Yearsley Baths.

It explained the authority's preferred course of action which, at that stage, included provision of a county standard pool.

SOB spokesman Ernie Preston said it had played a key role in the drawing up of the current proposals, which include redeveloping and privatising the auditorium, moving sports facilities to sites elsewhere, building a new community swimming pool and constructing 240 new apartments and a 135-bedroom hotel.

He felt it was "very damaging" that residents who would be most affected by the scheme had apparently failed to receive such a document. He did not believe that people had been sent the leaflet but simply forgotten about it over the past year.

He said the survey had also asked residents whether they supported the proposals, and the overwhelming majority had been against, citing concerns about loss of facilities, local parking problems and late-night traffic noise.

Charlie Croft, the council's assistant director of leisure and lifelong learning, said there had been some problems with distribution of the leaflet in some streets, including Barbican Road, but this had been raised at the time with the distributors, who had taken steps to rectify the problems.

He said the leaflet had been available at locations including the Barbican and the City Library, and he was satisfied that there had generally been a thorough and comprehensive public consultation over the future of the site.

Updated: 11:10 Tuesday, April 20, 2004