A COUNCILLOR has hit back at members of a campaign group fighting to save a community pool, saying the protesters are too focused on venting their frustration to cooperate with authorities in building a new facility.

Doug Wilson, a Conservative County Councillor, who has been target of much of the Save Millom Pool group's discontent, questioned the motivations of campaigners and urged them to push on together to find a solution after months of feuding.

The pool building is set to face the bulldozers in October, with county chiefs submitting plans to demolish the facility, which is based on the Millom School site.

In an intervention that has drawn criticism from members of the campaign group, Mr Wilson, who also sits on Copeland Borough Council and Millom Town Council, said the county council and the group needed to work together.

He said: "I have found that in this life in order to get things done you have to engage and work with people.

"The Save Millom Pool group set out on a course of alienation of the Cumbria County Council, school head and governors - the key bodies that needed to be engaged with to make any headway, if that was what was intended.

"Sadly what they set out to do was destroy any sense of cooperation that they might have engendered by criticising, vilifying and alienating the very bodies they needed to make headway with.

"That raises the question of leadership and intentions - did they really want to keep the pool? Or were there other issues to nail."

Responding to Mr Wilson's claims, a spokeswoman for the group said: "He voted to support our group at a town council meeting in May but he has never done that.

"It comes down to actions speaking louder than words.

"We want to reopen our pool until a new one is built and willing to work with anyone to do so.

"We have the backing of elected Mayor Mike Starkie and MP Trudy Harrison who know the professional way we work.

"Maybe Cllr Wilson is hurt because the truth does hurt."

Angela Dixon, the deputy mayor of Millom and member of the campaign group, who spoke as a member of the community, said she hoped the group could work together with Mr Wilson to get a new a pool for the town.

She said: "We have not had the level of support in Millom we would have liked from Cllr Wilson. But I would welcome the chance to meet with him along with the Save Millom Pool group as well as Trudy Harrison and Mike Starkie.

"We hope we can move forward together to get a new pool but first we need to meet."