A STORM blew up today after York council revealed it could cost £4.4 million to save two endangered swimming pools.

Independent consultants have estimated that the Barbican and Yearsley baths each need a £2.2 million refurbishment now to bring them up to standard for another 25 years.

The Edmund Wilson pool needs £1.7 million "in the medium term".

The figures were previously secret, but have now been revealed in a council leaflet being circulated to homes across the city, accompanying a questionnaire asking residents for their views on the future development of the three leisure centres.

But the leaflet gives no breakdown of the problems uncovered by the consultant engineers.

The accuracy of the costings was questioned today by swimming pool campaigners and also Liberal Democrat leader Steve Galloway.

They suggested the authority was trying to "frighten" residents with speculative statistics as they prepared to fill in the questionnaire.

Coun Galloway suggested that some of the bill, particularly at Yearsley, might not relate to essential repairs needed to keep the pool open but merely to desirable aims.

"The consultants' initial report raised more questions than it answered," he said. "These figures are highly speculative and are intended to frighten people."

Barbican campaigner Dorothy Nicholson said the repair figures could unfairly influence the way people voted in the questionnaire.

But the council's acting head of leisure, Charlie Croft, insisted the figures were accurate - and said he himself had not yet been given full details of all the refurbishment work the consultants believed was needed.

"All we have are some headline figures, and we do not have the details behind them," Mr Croft said. He added that when full details were provided in a fully comprehensible form, he would make them public.

He also stressed that he did not believe the costs to be central to what people were being asked in the questionnaire. Residents were being asked to say which leisure option they would most like to be available at each leisure centre before the council sought re-development ideas from private companies.

Meanwhile, campaigners also have concerns about the clarity and fairness of the questions asked on the form. Dorothy Nicholson said that, for example, people could say they wanted to see "fitness swimming eg lane swimming" or "family fun pool," but there was no opportunity to vote for "recreational swimming" or "school swimming".

But Mr Croft rejected such claims as well, saying "fitness swimming" referred to a rectangular pool of water suitable for family recreational swimming as well as lane swimming. "It couldn't be simpler," he claimed.

Despite her concerns, Mrs Nicholson urged residents across York not to throw the questionnaire away but fill it in and return it to the council, preferably in support of the swimming option.