Swimming provision for children in Hereford comes under scrutiny

Herefordshire Council's decision not to re-open the local education swimming pool at St Martin's, Hereford, and instead provide lessons for youngsters at Hereford Leisure Pool came under the spotlight this week.

The pool closed in December last year due to a malfunctioning boiler and other long-term structural faults involving water leakage. In the long-term, repairs totalling around £300,000 are required to make the building energy efficient and comply with health and safety regulations. In addition, the on-going cost of keeping the pool open would top £137,000 a year, according to an independent study.

As a result, when Herefordshire Council's cabinet met on 31 July, councillors agreed not to reopen the St Martin's pool but for Halo Leisure to provide swimming at Hereford Leisure Pool from September instead. It was agreed this would be monitored to ensure the needs of schools and other users would continue to be met, and that a report detailing the outcome of this would be brought before cabinet next Easter (2009).

Children's services scrutiny committee called in this decision in order for it to be scrutinised by councillors and assess the robustness of the decision.

Councillor Sally Robertson, chairman of the committee, said: "Swimming is a life skill, it can save lives and we owe it to our children to get this right, to work together to achieve this aim".

The scrutiny committee met on Monday 29 September and agreed to make the following recommendations to cabinet:

a) The council invests £72,500 to enable the pool to be reopened as soon as possible;
b) That there should be no additional costs to schools;
c) The existing charge to schools be maintained; and
d) A thorough feasibility/business case for the next two years (to include the St Martin's pool, HALO and other users) be formulated on the future of the pool in the context of the whole of Herefordshire swimming provision.