The chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, is to offer a lifeline to England’s struggling swimming pools with a £63 million fund that will be managed by Sport England and made available for one year. The allocation will be made as part of the Budget on Wednesday.
Authorities that manage council-run pools will be able to apply to have a portion of this fund for their leisure centres. Many pools are unable to meet their operational and maintenance costs, partly because of rising energy bills.
Hundreds of pools have shut down in the past few years, some because of the pandemic’s impact and others as a result of soaring energy costs.
Sport England said it hoped the fund would be used to make existing facilities more energy efficient. Its chief executive, Tim Hollingsworth, said: “This is a significant and welcome amount of support from the government that will offer a lifeline to many public leisure centres across England as well as help sustain them into the future. Swimming pools play a vital role in our communities and are enormously important in helping people to be physically active in their daily lives.
“We know how difficult the present situation is, and have been working hard to ensure these providers get the support they need. We will now turn our efforts to supporting the process in the weeks ahead to distribute the funding made available today to ensure it goes where it is needed the most.”
The news followed recent headlines about Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s private pool, which uses so much energy that the electricity network in his area had to be upgraded to meet its demands. The Guardian revealed that his North Yorkshire manor, complete with a gym, a tennis court, a boathouse and a private lake, has a newly installed heated pool.
In response to many Brits criticising the move, Sunak told BBC News: “I absolutely understand that the number one challenge people are facing is with the cost of living and particularly energy bills.
“So what do I do? We tax energy companies more and we’ve used that money to reduce people’s energy bills by £1,000.
“That’s the actions of this Government, the actions of me as prime minister and chancellor, I think people can see from that that I do take this really seriously.”
