HUNDREDS of people have signed a petition calling on Southend Council to keep Warriors swim centre open.

The pool, in Southend town centre, will be demolished for development when a new £10million pool is completed at the Southend Leisure and Tennis Centre at Garon Park.

The pool at Garon Park will boast world-class diving facilities and could become a training camp for the London 2012 Olympics.

However, Labour councillor Mike Royston and the party's candidate for Milton ward, Tony Borton, launched a petition calling on the council to retain a pool in the town centre.

Today they are planning a demonstration outside the pool to raise the profile of the campaign and plans to hand their petition in at the full council meeting on Thursday, April 24.

Mr Royston said: "It is going really well and I am hopeful we will be able to reach more than 1,000 signatures by the time of the council meeting.

"We have had a stall in Southend High Street on a couple of occasions and people have been queuing up to sign the petition.

"It just shows there is a real strength of feeling about this issue in the town."

Mr Royston said he had been swimming regularly at Warrior Square for more than 30 years and knew other people who had been there even longer.

He added: "Taking a public pool away from the town centre will also be damaging to the economy of the town.

"People come into Southend with their families to go swimming and then use the town centre shops.

"They are not going to do this if the pool is miles away from the High Street and the seafront."

David Garston, Tory councillor responsible for leisure, said: "Mike represents the ward where the new pool is going to be and I would have thought he would have been pleased for his residents.

"I am excited and delighted we are going to have a new state of the art pool in the town to replace a 1960s building which has reached the end of its useful life."