TWO Southend swimming clubs are at loggerheads over the use of the borough’s sparkling new £13.5million Olympic pool.

Swimmers from Southend Swimming Club refused to get in the water with their Borough of Southend Swimming Club (BOSS) counterparts at the grand opening of the facility on Monday evening.

They held up protest posters over plans for joint training sessions between the two clubs at the new 25m pool in Eastern Avenue.

It follows a year of tense negotiations to merge both groups into a single club called Southend Aquatics.

Helen Lawton, head of coaching at Southend Swimming Club, said they are unhappy with a last-minute revision to an agreed timetable for swimmers.

She said Monday’s protest took place without the knowledge of the club’s committee, but said she could understand members’ frustrations.

She said: “We thought we had an agreement to keep the timetable we had at Warriors Swim Centre.

“But we found out at a meeting on Thursday that was not the case, so the swimmers took it upon themselves to protest at the poolside.”

Paul Goodey, secretary at BOSS, said the timetable had been drawn up by the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA), the governing body for the sport in England.

He said: “The development of these two clubs into one single club was always going to be difficult.

“But now the situation is in the hands of the ASA and we will wait to hear what they have got to say.”

Southend Swimming Club has about 200 members, and Boss about 160. Both previously trained in different time slots at Warriors Swim Centre, in Warriors Sqaure, Southend, before it closed earlier this month. Both have a proud record of producing top swimmers including Olympic swimmers Mark Foster, Sarah Hardcastle and Jackie Wilmott.

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