THE handling of repairs to a fire-damaged swimming pool closed for almost a year has been a “debacle”, a meeting has heard.

On June 19 last year, the fire service responded to a call of a blaze on the roof at Peebles Swimming Pool at Port Brae.

Although the fire caused moderate damage to the roof structure, there was significant water penetration to the plant room and ceilings within the main pool hall as a consequence of extinguishing the fire and the pool was closed to the public.

The closure of the facility has had a major impact on leisure provision in the town, particularly for the 580 children on the Peebles Learn to Swim programme.

It had been hoped the pool would reopen this month but it has now emerged that it will not be open to the public again until July at the earliest as the result of additional repairs being identified.

When members of the council’s executive committee met on Tuesday (April 18), they endorsed further funding of £700,000 to complete the works needed.

Melrose councillor David Parker agreed that the work was required but called for it to be funded from the council’s reserves.

Mr Parker also said lessons needed to be learned from the prolonged delay in reopening the important Live Borders-run leisure facility.

He said: “The fire took place in June 2022 and works commenced in January. So what exactly were we doing between June 2022 and January 2023? It surprises me that having nearly seven months to analyse what needed to be done that we are coming back in a matter of two and a half months and we are asking for an additional £700,000.

“I think we need a lessons learned report back. This has not been well-handled from what I can see. It has been a bit of a debacle for Peebles and there is a range of unanswered questions.”

John Curry, the council’s director of infrastructure and environment, said: “This fire wasn’t a cause of ours. We have not been sitting around not doing very much, we have been working hard to resolve this issue that wasn’t of our own making.

“We had two insurers around the table, two loss adjusters around the table, which makes it slightly more challenging to navigate.

“The project was complicated because the asbestos roof was damaged in the fire and there was concern of asbestos contamination and we spent a long time in the aftermath going through that building testing and taking samples to make sure there was no contamination.”

Tweeddale East councillor Robin Tatler added: “I think I speak for the local members and the local community that their key priority is to get this swimming pool back into operation.

“It’s now nearly a year since the pool had to close. This whole episode has not been a particularly edifying spectacle and we need to review this to see how we go if this happens again. It shouldn’t take so long to deal with this.

“Because of COVID we have now had no swimming education in a town that has a river running through it. It’s really important we get this back in operation.”