A THIRD petition against the planned closure of Oxford’s Temple Cowley Pools has been handed to councillors, this time with a call for them to resign.

The 2,385 signature petition was presented to Oxford City Council on the heels a 2,600-signature petition in April, and one with 10,000 names in October.

The council is set to close the Temple Road facility for a £16m pool next to Blackbird Leys Leisure Centre. The existing Blackbird Leys Pool will shut.

Save Temple Cowley Pools campaigner Nigel Gibson told councillors: “We have lost confidence in the Labour administration running the city council and call on all the Labour councillors to resign immediately.”

This brought chuckles from Labour benches but applause from campaigners seated in the Town Hall’s public gallery.

Petitions had been “totally ignored” despite “overwhelming” public support, Mr Gibson said, and the latest features new signatories.

He told Monday’s meeting: “The council seemed to have little concern for what the public thought over the issue and the many requests we made as a campaign group yielded answers that only prompted more and more questions.”

The council has said the facility is not energy efficient and has a £2.3m maintenance backlog.

But Mr Gibson said the authority had “deliberately failed” to maintain the pool for the past 10 years and said there was no demand for what he called the Blackbird Leys “vanity project”.

The council hit back with a statement saying Temple Cowley had “by far the highest carbon footprint” of the city’s leisure centres, and insisting the new pool would last 60 years, not 25 as claimed.

It is expected to get 400,000 annual visitors compared to 256,000 at the two threatened pools, it said, and there will be no redundancies against the 30 claimed. Costs will not “skyrocket” as they will be capped, it added.

Van Coulter, city executive board member for leisure services, will be asked to approve the new facility on July 21.