IT looks like Coun Galloway is punishing the Save Our Barbican group by ensuring they do not get a proper council-owned swimming pool within walking distance of their homes.

However some of us said right from the start that the Kent Street option would never be realised. An excuse for abandoning it was bound to come at some time. How much effort is really being put into re-populating the city centre?

As for locals being able to use the proposed hotel pool and fitness suite, I have yet to find a hotel pool that is big enough to enable a proper swimmer to manage more than half a dozen strokes before reaching the other end.

In any case the hotel would soon find an excuse for making prices prohibitive once any council restrictions were relaxed.

Alec Acomb,

Hillcrest Avenue,

Nether Poppleton, York.

Updated: 09:56 Monday, January 30, 2006