29th November
Yesterday Birmingham City Council announced that in order to reduce its spending it intends to close nine public swimming baths, which it says lose money, then rebuild six of them and finally, when they are finished, pass the running of them over to private firms who will then manage them for a profit.
This is utterly crazy. Even if the various pools were not popular and well used (which most of them are), the idea that it is cheaper to spend money demolishing them, only to spend even more money rebuilding some of them seems devoid of all logic. Further than that, if they acknowledge that private firms could run the rebuilt baths at a profit, why could the council not run them itself at the same level of profit and in doing so, defray some of the expense it had already incurred?
As it is, the council plans to spend huge sums of money on this scheme, believing that in doing so it is somehow making a saving. Having spent the money, it then appears not to have considered the fact that it will have paid for facilities it has no intention of making any money back on.
In a radio interview this morning, deputy council leader Ian Ward said that people these days wanted integrated facilities with gyms and cafes. Maybe this is true. Perhaps he is right, but if so, it is equally true that the existing facilities are popular and heavily used - perhaps he and his staff have not visited any recently. Perhaps, in the light of his comments, they have also failed to notice the plethora of well filled gyms which already exist across the city. They also seem not to have considered the fact that some of these swimming pools (and this applies particularly to the ones they do not intend to rebuild) are in socially deprived areas and constitute one of the main opportunities for a positive and healthy diversion from poverty. Without the opportunity to spend time swimming, far more young people will be likely to fill their free time with petty crime and gang activity.
Of course, people in deprived areas do not pay much to go swimming. Most are eligible for the 'Passport to Leisure' scheme which allows holders free access to council owned gyms, pools and other facilities. It is hardly a wonder then, that the council loses money on swimming pools. Did it ever really expect to draw a profit from them when it also has a scheme which allows those who use them most to use them for free? Of course not, but that does not make the passport scheme in any way wrongheaded. Free use of swimming pools for those who need them most but cannot afford them is surely one of the reasons public baths were originally built. They are a service the council should provide for those of its citizenry who lack the means to use private pools, of which there are a number.
In planning to remove these public facilities from areas where they are most needed, one might begin to suspect that the council has decided that those who can make them no profit do not matter. Then again, they don't plan to make a profit anyway. They plan to give that away for free!
If the council really does genuinely want to save money on the running of swimming pools, it would be far cheaper for them simply to close them until better economic times than it is for them to spend millions demolishing them and then rebuilding some of them. Perhaps it goes with the times to treat those who pay a lesser share of council tax with contempt, but if the council thinks that spending millions it won't get back is the same as spending less, it really needs its planning staff to go back to primary school and learn some basic mathematics.
