A SPECIAL meeting to discuss the town council's response to the proposed closure of Ships and Castles is to take place on Monday evening.

The meeting follows the town council's own survey and two public meetings in which it sought the opinions of local people on what they would want to see happen with the site on Pendennis Headland. There's still time to complete the town council survey online at surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ftcshipsandcastles but it closes on October 25.

The not for profit company that runs the site, GLL, says it can no longer afford to do so after heavy losses during the pandemic, unless the county council bails them out.

A public consultation has been launched with the county council saying unless a solution is found four leisure centres - Saltash, Launceston, Wadebridge and Ships and Castles in Falmouth will close on April 1.

At the latest meeting held at the Princess Pavilion concerns were raised that the site would be 'sold for peanuts'. The meeting was told the building has a ten-year shelf life.

A straw poll found that all the people in attendance wanted a proper pool for the town but also wanted to preserve the headland from development at the same time.

Rachael Pashley asked the meeting why Falmouth, being the largest town, had been placed in the Tier Two category, which means it must have a leisure facility with 30 minutes of the population centre, rather than Tier 1 in which the population must have leisure facilities.

Cllr Jayne Kirkham told the meeting that when the pandemic happened Cornwall Council got a consultancy company to put together a strategic leisure strategy and they put Falmouth in Tier Two.

Cllr Jude Robinson told the meeting she thought that was a load of "absolute baloney". "There is just no rationale or reason why we should be in Tier 2 and it will be in the council's response to Cornwall Council's consultation," she said.

Cllr David Saunby called for a petition to be set up to be physically delivered to the county council consultation team before the cabinet meets to make a decision on the way forward on December 15.

A child at the meeting said it was very difficult to know what to do but it was very important to protect the headland and said things weren't as "black and white" as they seemed.

A teacher from King Charles School told the meeting that 400 children at the school were going to be asked their opinion on the pool and other schools had been contacted as well.

"We have to provide swimming, it's a statutory responsibility," he said. "Ships and Castles isn't perfect but we make it work for us. The disruption from a day of learning to have to go elsewhere is really quite monumental. It might seem quite small but actually when you've got to take out half a day to go somewhere else, get the swimming teachers and then it's the cost to families so I think it's a really important issue. A child's opinion, if you ask them if they want a pool, they're going to say they want a pool, I think that is so, so important that we hear the child's voice in this."

Cllr Edwards said: "We are surrounded by water on three sides, it's unsafe if our children can't learn to swim here, frankly. I don't understand how they can even think about taking it away, it's bonkers

Councillors are going out at the weekend with surveys for the public to complete. The Cornwall Council consultation until October 31 is at letstalk.cornwall.gov.uk/leisure