North Yorkshire swimming pool gets £10k cash boost

6:00pm Monday 17th November 2008

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A SWIMMING pool hit by a catastrophic failure of hundreds of tiles last year has received a £10,000 grant to help it get back on an even keel.

Tadcaster Swimming Pool Trust had to raise £130,000 for vital repair work after tiles started coming loose from the base of the tank last June.

After a mammoth fundraising drive, repairs were completed and the pool reopened in February.

Now Selby District Council has given the trust £10,000 to shore up their finances, in return for a new partnership arrangement between the two organisations.

Pool manager Glen Johnson said he was delighted with the grant. “It’s brilliant news,” he said. “The repairs are all finished now. However, we were left with no contingency funding and we’ve been hit by rises in fuel prices like everyone else.”

He said the pool used a lot of energy heating and treating the water. “Projecting ahead, we needed some form of security long-term and the district council again came to our aid,” he said.

The local authority contributed £25,000 to the trust’s repair programme last year. Mr Johnson said the partnership agreement would benefit both parties. Coun Gillian Ivey, chairwoman of the council’s social board, said there were three main areas of joint working.

She said direct debit-paying users of Tadcaster Leisure Centre would be able to use the swimming pool facilities for free; the trust would work with the council to offer youngsters free swimming as part of the school holiday Wick-Kid scheme; and the organisations would work together to develop a district-wide swimming squad to support the area’s best young swimmers.

“Tadcaster swimming pool is an important resource and we believe it’s vital to support the trust so people in the area can continue to use the service,” she said.

“By working together, we can ensure that people living in and around Tadcaster have the leisure services they need on their doorstep.”

The pool, used by many people from York as well as Tadcaster and Selby, closed on June 7 last year after lifeguards spotted tiles were coming loose. After the pool was emptied, hundreds were found to be defective.

Tests later revealed that the most likely reason for the failure was a build-up of pressure beneath the tiles, breaking the adhesive bonds.

Investigations suggested this might have been a latent defect of construction or design, dating back to when the pool was first built in the 1990s.

Sport England gave the trust a £43,000 lottery grant earlier this year, after £100,000 had been raised last year by the local community, businesses and the town and district council.