Madam,

You report ‘Libraries and pools not luxury items’ (Cambrian News, last week) from the non-political SOS Gwynedd group.

The group is quite right. But the pool is a facility of far wider impact than Tywyn itself. The pool is made available to schoolchildren, and they, as the morning and afternoon trains show, come from Llwyngwril, Fairbourne, Friog, Arthog and Barmouth. Indeed that pool is used regularly by people who come from Dolgellau and who live on the Tywyn-bound bus and train routes.

The pool is therefore a vital facility for a large group of inter-connected communities.

Of course Barmouth and Dolgellau should have had their own pools years ago. But the solution to that piece of Plaid Cymru Gwynedd Council inactivity and neglect surely cannot be to close the Tywyn pool.

And, as we all know, judicious management and the cutting of excessive so-called back-room services by Plaid would obviate the need for any cuts at all.

As Graham Hogg, the secretary of the Dwyfor Meirionnydd Labour Party, points out, the May 2015 Child Measurement Programme for Wales Report finds 30.1 per cent of our youngest schoolchildren here overweight. The Welsh average is 26.5 per cent. In Vale of Glamorgan it is 21 per cent. The county council is just not helping parents with their top priority, their children’s physical health. Plaid Gwynedd Council’s Strategic Plan says nothing about improving children’s health and the importance of physical activities. The Child Measurement report emphasises the importance of “opportunities for physical activity” in fighting overweightness.

How can Plaid Cymru councillors even contemplate the closure of the pool and leisure facilities at Tywyn, so threatening the health of Gwynedd children and adults alike?

Your etc

Ian MacIntyre

Prospective AM Candidate

Dwyfor Meirionnydd Labour Party.