It has been a tough time for leisure services across the UK in recent years. Local councils, the principal funding source for community leisure services, have seen their budgets squeezed and squeezed again and Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s first effort offers little to support to leisure, cultural and public health services.
Nationwide, over the past few years, more than three hundred public swimming pools have closed. This is the main reason why more than one in three primary school leavers do not have basic swimming skills to save their lives.
It estimated that more than 200,000 11-year-olds have not mastered basic survival techniques, such as floating, despite swimming being compulsory for children aged seven to 11. Pupils leaving primary school should be able to swim unaided for 25 metres. However, on average 36.5% of children in 2,577 English primary schools did not achieve the required level by the end of last year, according to research by the Amateur Swimming Association.
Public swimming pools are a vital, and frequently underestimated, resource.
As well as teaching children water safety and swimming, they are home to well over 1,000 swimming clubs, big and small, which in turn are the bedrock of competitive swimming in this country.
Swimming pools also provide for a wide range of other activities from aqua-aerobics to sub-aqua training to, most commonly, simple recreational and fitness swimming.
Which makes the position in Newham all the more remarkable.
Despite austerity Britain and constant budgetary pressures, there have been no pool closures in the borough. In fact, pool provision increased with the opening of the Aquatic Centre in the QEII Olympic Park.
Perhaps even more remarkably, Newham Council rebuilt Atherton Leisure at a cost of £13 million including two new swimming pools – a 25metre, 6-lane community pool and a 20metre teaching pool with a moveable floor. Both pools are fully accessible to disabled users.
This is in addition to the main and teaching pools at Balaam, Newham and East Ham leisure centres.
As a consequence, Newham supports a full school and learn-to-swim programme, free public swimming for the under-16s and over-60s and the Newham and University of East London Swimming Club.
The latest Active Lives survey from Sport England shows that swimming remains one of the most popular mass participation activities and has great potential for growth over the next decade.
So whilst the budget does not offer much for the leisure industry as a whole, the position locally is far from bleak.
Newham residents are set to pay the lowest Council Tax in outer London and see no cuts to the Council’s frontline services. Newham Council’s part of the Council Tac will be frozen for the ninth successive year.
The council, which has seen nearly half of its government funding cut since 2010, has been able to achieve this through an innovative approach to finding new ways of generating funding in the face of savage cuts from Whitehall.
This includes changes to the way it delivers its services including developing its small business programme – a radical and unique way in which the council is changing services to provide a better, fairer deal for residents whilst continuing to build resilience in the local community.
activeNewham is part of this. Established in 2013 as a charitable trust for the benefit of local people, it has already made a name for itself as one of the most innovative leisure trusts in the country. Working with the Council and with many local partners, the trust is making a real difference to the borough, helping to make Newham one of the most vibrant and active boroughs in the capital.
Remakable.