I've started this blog because all over Britain the public provision of swimming is gradually decreasing. The Government have known since at least 2001 that the stock of swimming pools in this country needed major investment. Their answer has been to close many of them, encourage the growth of private sector pools and change the way the number of pools is calculated.
In 2004, Richard Caborn, the then Sports Minister, started merging private and public pools together when asked how many pools there were in any given area or how many pools had closed. His stock answer was always that "more pools had opened than closed" and possibly this is true, if you add in pools in private health clubs, hotel pools, pools on military or naval bases etc as Mr Caborn did. However, the number of public pools was definitely falling.
To make matters worse local authorities were being encouraged to stand up and say that it was not their job to provide leisure facilities because the provision of leisure was discretionary and not statutory: legally, it was quite true, councils did not have to provide sports centres or swimming pools. This was a major departure from the former understanding that local councils would build, maintain and repair such centres for the benefit of the community. In the past, municipal pools had been a source of pride; now they became an easy source of "savings."
Campaigners appealing to the DCMS (Dept of Culture, Media and Sport) found themselves on the losing end of a 'piggy-in-the-middle' game, because the answer they received back was that local authorities were best placed to make these difficult decisions. Therefore as pools closed there was virtually no help from either local or central government sources.
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