An Angus sports club could be forced to find its third home in less than two years, depending on designs for the new Brechin Community Campus pool.
The Montrose Sub-Aqua club could be left without adequate facilities if the new swimming pool is built to a depth of less than three metres.
The club needs a pool depth of at least 3m for it to carry out realistic training, but had to move from Montrose in 2012 following the opening of the town’s £10 million leisure centre as the pool was only 2m deep.
Members of the club expressed their concern to the Angus Alliance Council, but they were forced to relocate to Brechin as proposals to build the pool deeper than 1.8m were not seen as “value for money”.
Club training officer Allan Swan is now concerned that if history repeats itself the club will be on the move again.
He said: “The council said the new facility would accommodate all existing users and bring in new users, but we are existing users and if it’s not 3m deep then it doesn’t accommodate us.
“We could go to Carnoustie, but we are Montrose Sub-Aqua Club.”
Diving officer Barrie Munro said: “When the council was doing the Montrose pool, some SNP members were not in power but they agreed with us the pool should be deeper.
“They weren’t in the administration, but they were saying that the pool size was wrong. Now they’re in and it’s their chance to stand by what they said.”
He added: “Some of our members can stand up in 2m of water, so how can they realistically train?”
A council spokeswoman said: “While draft plans for the new pool have been developed these have not been finalised and therefore no decision has been made on the agreed depth.
“The final decision will be informed by a number of different factors. This includes the guidelines by sportscotland, who recommend a minimum depth of 1.8m for sub-aqua activities, feedback gathered from the 12-week public consultation and also the requirement of a gradient of 1m to 1.2m for the teaching of swimming to young children. As part of the consultation period we received feedback about widening the pool, but none concerning its depth.
“However, we are currently investigating the feasibility and associated costs of building of a pool with a depth of 3m and that information will be considered along with the other factors prior to the design being finalised.”
A report from the 2009 Angus Council neighbourhood services director Ron Ashton said that increasing the depth of the proposed Montrose pool would have increased costs between £800,000 and £1.7m.
Mr Ashton said at the time: “Current usage of the swimming pool by the Montrose Sub-Aqua Club is for one hour/week for 26 weeks, 26 hours in total 1% of available pool time.
“It is the view of the project board that additional costs required to provide deep water and additional swimming lanes would not represent value for money.”