FUNDRAISERS are set to hold a meeting next month to hand back cash that was raised towards an ambitious scheme to get a disused Eastleigh swimming pool back into action.

The Shakespeare Community Pool Project was launched more than a decade ago in a bid to reopen a former swimming pool alongside Shakespeare Infant School on the Boyatt Wood estate as a community facility.

More than £30,000 was donated towards the £750,000 estimated cost of covering and refurbishing the pool including £10,000 from former Eastleigh mayor Maureen Sollitt raised during her year of office in 2001/02. Years of determined work were dashed nine months ago when education chiefs announced they had decided to fill in the pool.

It came as a bitter blow to project founder and driving force, Jane Field, 52, who went to the school herself and swam in the pool.

Now a public meeting has been arranged for Tuesday, March 22 at 7.30pm in the drama studio of Crestwood College in Shakespeare Road so that people who gave money to the pool project can have their say on where the cash should go.

The meeting will consider less than £20,000 of the money raised because the donors of more than £1,500 are known, while Mrs Sollitt will decide where her £10,000 will go.

Project chairman Terry Holden-Brown told the Daily Echo: "We are saddened that the project did not come to fruition.

"Some people who have been closely involved in it, like Jane Field, were deeply affected by the result of the decision and it took a little time for closure and to recover.

"She had been working hard at it for ten years. It did take a bit of time to get people's heads around it.

"We are not reluctant to part with the money - a big chunk of it came from the Mayor of Eastleigh's charity fund and she or her committee will have a view on what should happen to that money."