PROTESTERS will pack Rossendale Council chamber tomorrow night when two controversial decisions will be taken.

Councillors will first determine whether to close Whitworth Pool and then campaigners will be hoping the full council will overturn the recommendation from committee to sell part of Trickett's Memorial Ground in Waterfoot for a private garden.

When both items have been discussed at previous meetings, objectors have packed the seats around the council chamber, and when Whitworth Pool was debated, the adjacent committee room had to be opened because more than 50 people turned up.

But the pool will close unless the council can find a way of securing the £400,000 needed to bring the pool's plant and building up to standard.

At the last corporate policy committee the council was hoping to interest a national leisure company, which wants to open a facility in the Rochdale area, to possibly take on the pool and complex.

At the same meeting councillors narrowly voted to sell part of the memorial grounds off Burnley Road East, which were paid for by workers at the former footwear company Henry Trickett's at Gaghills, Waterfoot.

The land, at the top of the memorial gardens, has been rented for many years by a resident of Thistlemount Avenue, Waterfoot, who has kept it as a garden, but now wants to build a conservatory on it and so has applied to buy the land.

Rebecca Lawlor, from the Save Lea Bank group, said: "We have asked the Mayor for permission for Jack Trickett to be allowed to speak.

"He used to work at Sir Henry Trickett's and is one of the few workers still alive who gave part of his wages to buy the land in memory of those workers who lost their lives in the First World War."

Several veterans and former soldiers will also be attending the meeting.

Christine Ashcroft, chairman of Whitworth Swimming Club, said she expected a large contingent to be present.

She said: "We are just hoping they have come up with a rescue package."

The club has 300 members and a huge waiting list. A petition with more than 4,000 names on it was submitted by the club and the council has received scores of personal letters from users and children from local schools, calling for the pool to be saved.