A Perth swim club believes plans for a new facility in the city must contain a leisure pool to meet the needs of the community.
Eve Thomson, president of Perth City Swim Club, says the swimming provision in the area is already inadequate and fears a loss of water would see many struggle to access a pool.
Perth and Kinross Council had proposed combining the two current pools at Perth Leisure Pool into a single eight-lane facility.
Eve told The Courier: “There’s no way a single eight-lane pool and a small teaching pool will be adequate to provide lane swimming for the members of the public that want to swim – it’s already inadequate.
“If you remove the leisure pool, and all the people who come for fun swims, and add them to that same pool, it is just not going to be adequate for the volume of people who want to use the water.”
She added: “Those who don’t want to commit to joining a club and commit to the training and the hard work that we do – but want to continue their swimming – they’re going to find it hard to find somewhere.”
An investigation by The Courier backs up those concerns, finding that Perth has the least amount of leisure swimming availability in the cities across Tayside, Fife, Stirling and Inverness.
Campaign for all sports
Plans for a new facility are set to come forward in August after the previous proposal, which did not include an ice rink, leisure pool or indoor bowls, was rejected by councillors.
The Courier wants to ensure the opportunity is seized to build Perth a leisure centre to be proud of.
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Club cannot grow with current facilities
Perth City Swim Club currently trains aspiring swimmers from the age of six to 22.
Olympic silver medalist Stephen Milne came through the ranks ahead of his podium finish at the 2016 games in Rio.
But coach Ann Dickson says the lack of water availability in Perth, even with the leisure pool, means they cannot grow as a club.
She told The Courier: “We are probably one of the top ten age group swim teams in Scotland but we could be far higher than that.
“But we can’t grow the club because we have limited time because we have to share the pool – and I’m quite aware of that.
“There’s a very limited time period where, as an adult, you can actually come and have an ordinary swim.
“Having the pool as they stipulated, as a new eight-lane pool, will just not meet the needs of the whole community.
“We’ll have a facility that’s cost an awful lot of money but is not fit for the purpose of the city.”
The coach told The Courier that the club had to rely on the help of Dundee City Council and Stirling to train Stephen Milne ahead of the Olympic games.
She also said their current swimmers don’t get enough pool time even with the current facilities and alongside utilising Kinross and Kilgraston pools.
“Our top swimmers operate off of about 11-11.5 hours a week, in Scotland other clubs would be doing 18,” Ann said.
Missed opportunities for swimming
Both Eve and Ann believe there have been numerous missed opportunities to grow Perth’s swimming provision over the years.
The swim club president points to a lack of investment in swimming pools at the city’s new schools.
“Other cities have added pools to their new build schools and that allows clubs like ourselves to do a few nights a week outwith the main council pool which frees up space for public swimmers to come in,” said Eve.
“We don’t have that option here. We would be down to one pool and that’s all we would have in the city of Perth.”
Ann believes there was a wasted opportunity after Stephen Milne’s performance in Rio.
At that time a new leisure facility called PH20 was greenlit and the money had been set aside in the capital budget – but it never materialised with funding syphoned off for other projects.
“We had a great opportunity to publicise what was possible with what we had and we just lost it all – it just kept being deferred,” said Ann.
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