AS some of your readers may be aware, the recent petition to Harrogate Borough Council concerning the proposals for a new swimming pool in Ripon has been rejected out of hand.

The council will not engage in any further consultation. The views of more than 3,000 people are being completely ignored. They are proceeding with planning applications that will enable the Ripon Spa Baths site to be developed for housing.

The justification for ignoring us is that the petition was biased and inaccurate and that people have been cynically mislead into signing it. This is ,of course, their only possible defence in the circumstances.

One charge of inaccuracy is that campaigners have accused the council of planning to demolish the Ripon Spa Baths. In making this statement we have simply repeated, word for word, the council’s publicly stated policy. I will repeat it again here. It is that:

“Planning and listed building consent be sought from the Secretary of State for the demolition of the Ripon Spa Baths.”

This policy was confirmed by Chief Executive Mike Walsh as recently as May 8. Fortunately, there are other policies that protect our local heritage. Unofficial statements issued in recent weeks that back off from the starkness of the policy wording arise from awareness that any plans that conflict with these policies must be justified.

The alarm bells rang with me in January when I read the report to Cabinet on which the plans are based. It is a straightforward project proposal based only on economic considerations. Nowhere in the report is the word heritage mentioned. Nowhere does it state that the Spa Baths is a listed building. Regeneration of the site is not considered to be a feasible option.

Ripon City Council endorsed the plans subject only to retention of the Park Street façade and Pump Room. The petition was drafted shortly after this in January. The situation has not changed since then; 95 per cent of the buildings on the site will be razed or gutted for housing – this is substantial demolition. With the exception of the Pump Room, nothing of architectural significance inside the buildings will survive. The petitioners do not want this to happen.

Proponents of the scheme have also stated that “housing is an option of last resort”. This merely restates a policy that requires HBC to make every effort to retain the existing use or to find a compatible alternative use and that preservation in some form of charitable or community use is not possible.

There is no evidence that HBC has expended any effort on its own initiative to find an alternative solution. The partnership emerging from the Save Our Spa campaign (Ripon Civic Society, RABA and the swimming clubs) is convinced that regeneration of the site is perfectly feasible.