INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
GP surgeries, social care link workers and other health professionals confidence in signposting people towards a particular pool, knowing it’s set up to cater for the needs of those with health conditions. “So far, hundreds of pools up and down the country have signed up, with over 200 achieving accreditation to date. Everyone Active, for example, has all its pools accredited.” Addressing inequalities He adds: “The other important area at the moment is school swimming. We’re hopeful and optimistic that this year, for the first time, it’s going to be compulsory for schools to report their School Swimming and Water Safety attainment levels. “This is something we’ve campaigned for over many years and is absolutely crucial: I’ve recently heard a number of
coroners reference attainment in school swimming as key to preventing accidental deaths in water. “Compulsory reporting will allow us to identify and properly address local and regional variations; we already know of huge disparities around deprivation and ethnicity, for example. Nationally, 82 per cent of children with high family affluence can swim, dropping to just 39 per cent of children with low family affluence. “In fact, inequalities are an issue in swimming generally and something we’re looking to address. We’ve created a new role, Director of Community Participation and Health, with Helen Marney in post since April of this year. One of the things she’ll be looking at is how, in collaboration with local partners, we take a place-based approach to bring more people into swimming, particularly those from currently under-served groups.
82% of children with high family affluence can swim,
dropping to just 39% of children with low family affluence
“But of course, to achieve our agenda of lifelong participation, we need swimming pools across the country. The acceleration in the pace of closures is therefore very concerning: analysis we conducted with ukactive shows that 76 per cent of the publicly accessible water space lost in the past 15 years has been lost since 2020. “Equally concerning is that of the 10 local authorities with the biggest declines in pool space, 70 per cent have higher than average indices of deprivation, risking an exacerbation of health inequalities.” Working in collaboration He adds: “Sadly, this acceleration in the loss of water space isn’t unexpected or surprising: many ageing facilities require significant investment, energy costs remain high and the increase in national insurance has added around £90m–100m to the running costs for the big national operators alone. And in the end, there are only so many times an operator can go to the ideas bank and ask themselves: ‘How can we generate more revenue? How can we save costs?’ “So although we recognise the many demands on government finances, we will continue to lobby and campaign for investment. “If government wants to achieve its vision of economic growth, it needs a healthy population. If it wants to achieve its mission around health – moving from treatment to prevention, hospital to community – then swimming pools are the exact facilities it should be prioritising for investment. “We also need to explore private investment into swimming pools, whether that’s through government underwriting or tying in with big house-building projects. Salmon concludes: “We see one of our roles to be that voice championing and advocating for swimming in the corridors of Westminster and we’re very pleased to be doing even more of that through The Swimming Alliance. My view: we should all worry far less about who takes the credit for successes and far more about the outcomes we can achieve together.”
We need to emphatically make the case that our nation – and with it, our economy – will be healthier if we get people in the water
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STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2023 STATE OF THE UK SWIMMING INDUSTRY REPORT 2025
STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2023
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STATE OF THE UK SWIMMING INDUSTRY REPORT 2025
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