YORK MP Hugh Bayley has waded into the controversy over the future of the city's Barbican Centre.

He attacked proposals to replace the existing swimming pool with a smaller community pool, claiming a larger eight-lane county pool would have put the city on the sporting map.

He has also suggested that City of York Council's public consultation over plans to redevelop the site was "inadequate", claiming that many residents were unaware it was even going on.

He raised concerns about the density of the proposed apartment block, which he said was 100 flats more than had originally been proposed by the authority's former Labour ruling group.

He also told the Evening Press that the existing pool - currently scheduled for closure on June 7 - should stay open until the future of the whole site is clear. He said there must not be any gap in the provision of sports space following the Barbican's closure.

The Labour MP spoke out in a letter to Save Our Barbican, the campaign group set up to oppose the Liberal Democrat-run council's plans to redevelop part of the Barbican site with 240 apartments and a 135-bedroom hotel, to privatise the auditorium and to build the new pool on the other side of Kent Street.

He said that when Labour ran the council, it had proposed to sell the auditorium to a private company and use the money raised to build a new "county" pool and fitness centre at the Barbican and contribute towards the refurbishment of the Edmund Wilson and Yearsley pools. He said he had written to the council to raise constituents' concerns.

Coun Keith Orrell, the council's executive member for leisure and heritage, said today that the community pool was chosen because that was what the majority of people who responded to the consultation exercise wanted.

He defended the consultation, which he said had been advertised in the usual way, including an exhibition at the Barbican, and had been responded to by thousands of people.

He said the flats scheme was bigger than originally planned because that increased the capital receipt, and also because the lack of archaeological remains meant that parking could be put underground, allowing more homes to be built above ground.

He said he just hoped the Barbican pool could stay open until June, considering problems being experienced with plant such as heating equipment. He said he wondered if it was a case of "sour grapes" by the MP because the Lib Dem councillors had negotiated a "better deal" than the Labour group had done previously.

Updated: 10:49 Wednesday, March 31, 2004