SIR – It appears that Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe has changed consultants mid-Pool .

The last lot justified the £30m – and still counting – cost of the Mirror Pool by telling us that it would attract 2.2m visitors a year and bring in an extra £80m annually to the Bradford economy.

The new consultants Ekosgen “confirm” we are getting visitors at the rate of 440,000 per year and an extra £2.6m to the city economy – a fifth of the visitors and one-thirtieth of the money.

Surely we merit an explanation of why there is such a difference?

Even these latest figures seem to be based on a ‘finger in the wind’, for the number at the opening will not be repeated and whether the increase in sales at the Kirkgate shopping centre is due to the fountains loosening purse strings is debatable.

We are stuck with the Mirror Pool and need to make the best of it, but let us be honest in our calculations.

We need to know the interest cost on the capital cost of either the stated £24m or the actual £30m, the cost of maintenance and servicing and the cost of providing entertainment balanced against the audited increase in takings and estimated increased profit of every shop within half-a-mile of the pool.

Then we will know what benefit the pool is giving and how to manage it to best effect.

John Pashley, Westcliffe Ave, Baildon

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe responds: “First of all, the £30 million you talk about – we are as yet unable to publish the final figure as we are still negotiating minor costs about the completion of the park.

“The 2.2 million visitors and £80 million revenue you refer to comes from a report produced in 2007 which was drafted in order to ask for funding from Yorkshire Forward for City Park and the ‘Business Forest’ – an office development around the pool.

“The figures were estimates of the number of people and the amount of spend which would be brought into the city. To compare this with the Ekosgen figures is comparing apples with pears.

“Obviously, we don’t have the offices yet and Eksogen were not looking at spend generated by visitors coming in and out of the park every day, they were looking uniquely at visitors and spend generated by the city centre events.

“The figures from Eksogen showed that in six months, events in the City Park contributed £1.3 million in spend and 120,000 visitors. In July and August, there were actually on average 100,000 visitors a week in and through the park. “To be honest, all you need to do is look out of the door of City Hall to see that City Park is thronging with people. Bradford has a genuine success on its hands and we shouldn’t be frightened of acknowledging that.”