HOPES of building a swimming pool in the upper dales have been dashed after a bid for lottery funding was rejected.

Leaders of the campaign for a pool at Hawes said the news on Monday signalled the end of a ten-year dream.

They said the decision by Sport England to refuse the bid for £445,000 was based on a "numbers game", which meant people in rural areas would always lose out to large towns and cities.

The grant would have funded almost half the cost of the £1m project, which would have served upper and mid Wensleydale, upper Swaledale and Arkengarthdale.

Coun John Blackie, county councillor for the upper dales and a leading light in the pool campaign, said: "It is the end of the dream. It is quite clear that the lottery is not prepared to support applications like the swimming pool in deeply rural areas. This follows the rejection of an application for a sports hall at the Wensleydale School in Leyburn, which means that sports provision remains 27 miles away from the upper dale.

"If they will not support us, it is the end of the dream and has dashed the hopes and aspirations of so many people."

The bid was submitted nearly a year ago and backed by consultants' reports and a business plan which demonstrated that the pool would have been profitable from the day it opened to the public. Local people had volunteered to help run it and more than 120 letters of support were written.

"We used Sport England's own template for small pools, which already operates in Epworth, near Doncaster, where a pool opened four years ago and is still running at a profit," said Coun Blackie.

Sport England's reasons for refusing the Hawes bid were based on the fact that, because of the sparsity of population in the area, an insufficient number of people would benefit from the investment.

The organisation recognised that, at 27 miles from the nearest pool, Hawes was further away from a swimming pool than any other community in the Yorkshire and Humber region. However, it ruled that existing provision - at Richmond, Bedale and Kendal, each a 54-mile round trip from the upper dale - should meet demand.

Sport England also questioned whether match funding could be raised.

Coun Blackie said the community would now concentrate on trying to bring smaller sports schemes to the area. Possibilities included a modest sports hall or a multi-use games area.