Pool progress

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It is good to be able to report some progress, albeit slow, on the Leisure Centre swimming pool.

Most readers will be aware that the operators appointed by Rother District Council, Freedom Leisure, closed the pool at the beginning of November last year with minimum notice and on the grounds that, in view of the dramatic increase in energy costs, it was no longer viable to keep it open.

In his address to the Town Meeting on Tuesday March 7, the mayor, Cllr. Andi Rivett, explained that in an effort to ensure that it was reopened as soon as possible, he had been leading discussions on behalf of Rye with Rother District Council and Freedom Leisure (FL) to try and find a way forward. In this he was aided by William Coatesworth who was well qualified to look into the financial aspects of running the pool and keeping it open.

Undoubtedly the work would have proceeded at a far greater pace had FL been prepared to cooperate to a greater extent than was in fact the case. It was not, it would seem, prepared to divulge the details behind the decision to close the pool nor was it prepared to allow access to their management accounts.

Despite this, Mr Coatesworth was able to produce a model that threw up figures that even FL had to admit were “within £20,000” of its own.

The Leisure Centre has always operated at a deficit and until now this has been funded by a surplus derived from FL operations elsewhere. With the pool closed they claim the centre is showing an annual deficit of £50,000 per annum, but if it was open that figure would increase to £200,000 per annum. At the time of writing, Rye News does not know whether that figure relates to a time earlier last year when energy prices were at their highest or to a later date when there has been a significant reduction. We are assuming the former. Currently wholesale energy costs have reduced to a level below that at the start of the Russian / Ukrainian war in February last year (the spot price as at March 7 2023 was £117 per megawatt hour, down from a peak of £582 per mwh in September 2022 – source: Trading Economics), and this should make a significant difference to further forecasts.

On the plus side, the mayor told us, both FL and Rother have agreed that the Rye community should be given the opportunity to see if it was possible to take over the running of the Leisure Centre and if the town can satisfy FL that this is a realistic prospect, they (FL) would be prepared to provide the funds necessary to reopen the pool and then transfer management of the centre by April. Given this, Rother has agreed to provide the necessary capital costs for building maintenance and supplementary energy systems (e.g. solar panels and/or heat pumps).

While this is positive news, time is very much of the essence and the town clerk has already begun the task of identifying those with specialist knowledge to form a working group. There is a town council meeting scheduled for March 20 and the council will then be asked to confirm that it will take the lead on forming and supporting a working group whose identified members will be appointed at that time.

It is clear that a lot of hard work has been done to reach this stage and while progress, as we remarked earlier, may seem slow, this must largely be down to the recalcitrance of Freedom Leisure and our mayor and his team have done well to achieve all that they have done so far.

We will keep our readers updated with the lastest news as we receive it.

Image Credits: Chris Lawson .

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9 COMMENTS

  1. The key to whether Rye could take over the Leisure Centre operation on an ongoing basis depends on whether this could be achieved — after installation of solar power, heat pumps, etc — at no cost to the town’s people. Heat pumps do require some electricity. The financial figures could be crunched relatively easily. It’s encouraging that RDC has offered to purchase solar panels and heat pumps. The fact that FL is prepared to hand the facility over to Rye confirms our leisure centre is a loss-making concern. Rye Town Council is not in a position to subsidise the centre to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds a year, without an additional tax imposition on locals, which would likely be resisted. The centre remains important for the town, although I suspect it has been a significantly underused asset in the past, compared to leisure centres catering to larger populations.

  2. How are our young people ever going to progress if we have no pool.My grandchildren and others from the Marsh villages used this pool weekly for lessons and now have nowhere to swim other than overcrowded Ashford which is too far and coping with people from other areas.
    Tenterden pool also closed does not help.Its so important for our young children to swim also families, and our elderly trying to keep fit and able. Swimming is also a relatively cheap and fun activity with a young family compared to a day at a fun park.
    Please try and give us our pool back.

  3. Thank you Mayor and the rest of the town council who are working so hard to get our Pool open again! If the right people in the town are there to run it then there has got to be a way forward surely! Perhaps the opening hours can also be adapted to being open during the busy times and not open around the clock? This may also help to keep the pool open!

  4. The heat generated by a washing-machine-sized data centre is being used to heat a Devon public swimming pool. The computers inside the white box are surrounded by oil to capture the heat – enough to heat the pool to about 30C 60% of the time, saving Exmouth Leisure Centre thousands of pounds. The data centre is provided to the council-run centre free of charge. Start-up Deep Green charges clients to use its computing power for artificial intelligence and machine learning. Founder Mark Bjornsgaard said the company would also refund the leisure centre’s electricity costs for running the “digital boiler” – and seven other England pools had signed up to the scheme.

  5. There’s an additional, very interesting initiative being employed in Exmouth, whereby, a tech start-up has installed one of their data centres inside the pool building, and the heat generated from the computers helps heat the pool. Possibly another avenue for RDC and RTC to explore. There is hope!

  6. “England’s struggling swimming pools are to be offered a lifeline in the budget with the creation of a £63m fund to ease cost pressures.”
    As usual short term measures including throwing cash at the problem instead of thinking through long-term, sustainable solutions.

  7. A company in Devon called Deep Green using waste heat from computers to heat pools and cool the computers at the same time ?

  8. Freedom Leisure is exploring the use of data processing waste heat via its Technical Team and Swim England – and it will be considered by those looking into a community governance model for the Leisure Centre.

    Relations between the three main interested parties (Rother, Freedom Leisure and the Town Council) remain constructive – and Freedom Leisure’s offer to work with a new community operator as part of a handover/transition period is especially welcome. All parties are keen to find a way to re-open the pool (and not just in the short-term).

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