THE Campaign To Save Victoria Baths congratulates Nottingham City Council on its decision to spend £8m on the leisure provision for the east of the city.

But we are saddened that the council does not see fit to invest this money in the Victoria Leisure Centre in the way voters have asked for.

In the three surveys conducted (all of them financed by the council) 80% wished to keep the existing facilities, 93% of those surveyed would rather see Nottingham City Council put the money they promised into making VLC better and 92% agreed with the statement, "I want Victoria Baths to be done up. This would save some of the best bits of the building while making it more modern."

When Councillor Collins says "A small number of people want to refurbish an inadequate building" he is ignoring the consensus of the very people his own council surveyed and reducing their legitimate views to a meaningless soundbite.

They are not asking for a "make do and repair", neither are they asking for a "second rate, second class facility".

What they want (and what Save Victoria Baths have campaigned for) is for the council to listen to its voters. The consultation has revealed that people love the Victoria Leisure Centre and do not want a wholesale demolition, but a sensible look at what can be retained from the existing building and what cannot. The building is neither inefficient nor second class, as a whole host of evidence on the campaign website can verify. It is eminently saveable and can be developed in a sensitive and contemporary way that the people east of the city have asked for.

Save Victoria Baths Campaign was set up to prevent the closure of the VLC. The group captured the hearts and minds of many hundreds of people in a way that few campaigns do and made local and national headlines, yet still the council sees it as "a small number of heritage folk". This is a dismissive and insulting view.

The council were not elected to demolish the Victoria Leisure Centre and have no mandate to do so. They have tried every trick in the book to marginalise those whose views they disagree with. They gave the community just four weeks to respond to their decision to close the VLC on cost grounds, despite the fact (now known) that all along they could afford to refurbish it. Once the campaign was underway, the leader of the council, who is councillor for the St Ann's area, did not bother to turn up to the mass rallies to listen to his constituents.

When the campaign forced a retreat by the council, the council set up a working group, where meetings were not minuted and where the arguments won by the campaign and its supporters round the table were ignored by the council. Finally, the council spent thousands appointing a team of architects who are managed by a private company with no accountability to the electorate.

This whole sorry affair points to a crisis of legitimacy at the heart of Nottingham City Council.

Where a council is elected by such a small turnout of the vote, democracy can only thrive through active and sincere engagement with the people. The closure of the Victoria Leisure Centre has prompted one of the most widespread and engaged campaigns of this council's term of office, buttressed by extensive surveys. Yet the council still feels able to disregard us all. What hope is there for the people to be heard? Please remember all this when election time comes round again.