Dear everyone

We must keep believing that we CAN make a difference despite Kingston Council's determination to plough on with the demolition of The Kingfisher Leisure Centre despite widespread opposition to their plans

Please donate £5 or whatever you can afford to the fundraiser to request a legal opinion on the Council's decision to approve the planning application to demolish The Kingfisher

Thank you to everyone who keeps signing and sharing this petition to save The Kingfisher Leisure Centre in Kingston from demolition with no firm or funded plans for a replacement and with the threat that a new leisure centre will be dependent on mass development on The Cattle Market and Guildhall sites, and the sale of The Guildhall building to be run as a boutique hotel

A comment made by my Ward Councillor and Council Leader, Councillor Caroline Kerr, in response to community group,Save Royal Kingston's, petition to Save The Guildhall, summed up for me the disregard for democracy that engulfed Kingston Council

Councillor Kerr said at the meeting of Full Council (from 51 minutes) last week that:

"I myself think that" if The Guildhall is turned in to a boutique hotel, "residents might enjoy...more" coming to The Guildhall "for a drink or a coffee" than we "enjoy Full Council".

Attending council committee meetings has never been about having a good time but about exercising our democratic rights. Residents attend council meetings in the hope that our views will be heard andto make our elected representatives aware of any facts and legal details we have discovered that Council officers may have overlooked in their reports to Councillors

Many people attended Full Council last Tuesday to exercise our democratic rights. But the Council administration refused to listen to us and the 3600 people who have signed this petition not to demolish The Kingfisher Leisure Centre

Instead, they voted last Tuesday "against delay" to the demolition

It seems that Councillor Kerr and the current Administration of the Council has no qualms in shutting down our democratic rights while making us pay to access what should remain the prime landmark civic building for The Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames

But is their decision to approve their own planning application to demolish the Kingfisher legal?

We need to raise the money for a legal opinion without delay

Please donate £5* or whatever you can afford so that Kingston Council sees that we mean what we say

* I apologise and should have checked but the fundraiser takes a minimum donation of £5