Britain’s pools and leisure centres are perpetually neglected – how do we fix the problem?
John Harris, a Guardian columnist, recently wrote an article about the decline of leisure centres and pools in the United Kingdom (link at the bottom of this post). Interestingly, he makes the link between leisure centres, public health, the NHS and inequality. This really got us thinking about the state of affairs in the City of Westminster.
The argument that he makes is intriguing – the challenges of the NHS are inextricably linked to the challenges of the nation’s leisure centres. Poor public health means more sedentary lifestyles, more mental health issues, more heart, lung, and liver issues. And this carries a very literal cost. In (almost) the words of Wall Street’s capitalist tycoons – you need to spend money to stop haemorrhaging public funds on the consequences of public health crises.
If you look at the recent closures of leisure centres in Huddersfield, Milton Keynes, Rye, Coventry and Hull, you begin to see just how quickly swathes of the nation’s population is losing access to something that has been available to people since the Roman Era. Swimming is a basic human skill – an activity that anchors us to our natural origins, benefitting us both physically and mentally. The explanation behind why this is happening can be found in the fact that a large number of the country’s leisure centres were built in the 1960s, and Swim England gives a life expectancy to pools of 38 years. Since 2010, there has been very little funding towards leisure, and all of those facilities that have outlived their life expectancy are crumbling, struggling to pay sky-high energy costs, and simply don’t meet the standards of the demands of modern leisure activities.
Take the Queen Mother Sports Centre, for example. Due to experience its 42nd birthday this year, it has well exceeded its 38-year life expectancy. Most who have visited the centre recently will know that it is tired, ageing, and failing to meet the standards that you’d expect of one of Central London’s only leisure centres. It is emblematic of the issues seen across the country, but it may also harbour within it the solution. There are proposed plans for private investors to rebuild the facility from scratch, delivering a (still) council-run, world-class facility, paid for by the nature of the redevelopment being mixed-use and including retail, commercial and residential elements. It’s a win-win. The investors win in the profits they take from the wider development, and the community wins when it receives a brand-new sports facility with state-of-the-art swimming pools.
The QMSC is more than just a leisure centre. It’s a community asset. Take the Pimlico Puffins, for example. A volunteer run organisation that facilitates its disabled members learning to swim and exercise in the water. But it is more than that – speaking to one of the volunteers recently, I learned that the club is an absolutely crucial element of the social lives of a good number of its members. It takes a huge role in their lives. But, as the volunteer explained to me, the group is significantly held back by the inadequate facilities at the QMSC, which are wholly inappropriate from an accessibility standpoint. The council will never have the necessary funding to make the required changes – so why not let the private sector step in?