THE proposed £9.2m pool in Blackbird Leys is, unsurprisingly, officially no longer going to be an Olympic “legacy” project. If it is legacy of anything, it is to how long it takes to ever get any substantial community project completed in this country.

Oxford City Council was always giving itself a tight timeframe to bulldoze such a scheme through whilst hanging it on the trendy “Olympic legacy” theme.

But such a project, which involved pulling down Temple Cowley Pools, was always going to limp its way through the planning and legal process.

Perhaps very few people expected there to be such an entrenched and long-running fight to save Temple Cowley, but a strong dissatisfaction should have been anticipated. And, of course, we also have some people in Blackbird Leys using what has become a standard tactic of launching a Town Green application to derail the building of the new facility.

Of course those against it are using legitimate avenues available as part of a robust system of local democracy and we should all fight to protect that right.

But now the bills are mounting up.

As a city we now sit wearily waiting to see which paralysed project is ever likely to be built first: a new Botley Road bridge, a revamped Westgate or the pool in Blackbird Leys.