A COMMUNITY such as ours clearly requires a public swimming pool, not only for the benefit of residents but also for holidaymakers. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear that we have the wrong pool at the wrong price.

The latest available figures show that the States subsidised the Aquasplash pool on the St Helier Waterfront to the tune of £340,000 last year. The Public Accounts Committee now suggests that this year’s subsidy will amount to £400,000, a huge and unacceptable sum for a facility which, according to the highly paid consultants who advised on the scheme, should not record losses of more than £175,000 a year.

It is generally accepted that public swimming pools require subsidies from public funds. In this case, however, the scale of subsidy is simply too great. As Education Minister James Reed, whose department is responsible for the pool, has said, the contract with Serco, the facility’s private sector operators, must be reviewed.

But this, alas, will not mean that the pool itself becomes more satisfactory from the point of view of users. When plans showing what it would offer were first revealed it was suggested by many that it fell between two stools. It was neither a state-of-the art leisure pool of the sort found in so many holiday resorts nor a pool suitable for high-level competition.

That this criticism was well founded has been borne out by experience. In common with so much of the development on the Waterfront, compromise and the acceptance of buildings that are neither aesthetically pleasing nor fully fit for purpose have short-changed the general public.

All this is likely to lead to nostalgic yearning for the old Fort Regent pool, an admittedly ugly building which is still dominant on the skyline of Mount Bingham. Subsidy was also the rule when it was in operation, but takings at the turnstiles went into public coffers rather than into the account of a private company.

It is, of course, easy to be wise with hindsight. It is also easy to blame politicians now out of office for accepting so-called expert advice on the new pool uncritically. Neither helps in the present circumstances – in which the imperative is to stop the incessant haemorrhage of money occasioned by a piece of infrastructure that is grossly expensive.