Council to consider future of Hereford’s LEA swimming pool

Herefordshire Council’s cabinet will hear this week (Thursday 10 July 2008) that a local education authority swimming pool, which is dogged by long-term structural faults and leakage, will cost nearly £300,000 to repair and make energy efficient.  In addition, the ongoing cost of keeping St Martin’s swimming pool in Hereford open would top £137,000 a year, says an independent study.

Instead, children’s services officers are recommending that £35,200 be put immediately into a one-off investment in the successful Halo-run Hereford Leisure Pool to enable school swimming lessons to take place in time for the next academic year.  This would bring Hereford into line with the rest of the county, where school swimming lessons are provided for the majority of primary schools in clean and well-maintained Halo pools in Ledbury, Leominster and Ross.

Capital investment in the Hereford Leisure Pool is needed to address parents’ and schools’ concerns about improving links from changing rooms to pools, installing new toilets and creating coach parking so that pupils can be dropped off and collected close to the entrance. 

Members of the council’s children’s services scrutiny committee met in April to discuss the future of the St Martin’s pool which has been closed since Christmas 2007.  After considerable debate, the committee agreed to recommend to cabinet that the council should try and keep the pool open provided net costs could be covered.

Children’s services officers have not been able to identify funding to meet the costs of repair or the continuing running costs.  The cabinet will weigh up the recommendations of officers and the views of schools and the children’s services scrutiny committee in making its decision this week.