Protestors will be outside county hall in Truro this morning calling for Cornwall Council to ‘save our swimming pools’.

The Customers and Support Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be meeting from 10am and members of the public – all from the Wadebridge area – have submitted a series of questions for elected members of the Council over the current consultation into leisure services.

The local authority says that budgets are strapped, and that it cannot afford to subsidise the county’s leisure centres: operator GLL says it has lost millions during the pandemic and cannot continue to run all of Cornwall’s centres without financial support.

The protest is being organised by the Friends of Wadebridge Leisure Centre but in support of all of the five facilities under threat (Saltash, Launceston, Wadebridge, Falmouth, and the hydrotherapy pool at St Austell). Those who have submitted questions for today’s committee have focused on the impact of the proposed closures on users of the centre; the impact of the closures on Cornwall Council’s carbon neutral aims; the view that leisure services are an important part of preventative health and should therefore be budgeted for accordingly; the consultation itself, which has been described by many as ‘flawed, leading and confusing’; and specific questions over Wadebridge, for example how the income from solar panels on the centre’s roof has been used.

Looe Councillor and leader of Cornwall Lib Dems Edwina Hannaford is part of the committee and has also tabled a question during the meeting. In the light of how Cornwall Council’s Leisure Resources Strategy sets out the ambition to “support a network of public leisure centres for both residents and visitors to Cornwall at no cost to the council taxpayer”, she will ask “What kind of support is the Council thinking about if it’s not financial at all?”