When did it become impossible to take primary kids for a swim late afternoon or evening?

[Dragondent]

As a kid we could often go swimming after school - in fact, swimming parties were quite popular. Now I have to find a slot at some random time sufficiently in advance. It’s rubbish.

Yes. It's all swimming lessons and things at these times. Often can only really go at lunchtime or 6.30 ish but depends on the pool/area. It's a bit shit.

It’s lane swimming or lessons, although lane swimming is obviously still there during family swim, just with fewer lanes. I also miss turn up and go activities rather than prebooking every. Single. Thing.

No kids allowed in the pool at my club after 6pm when it switches to adult lane swimming only…

About 20 years ago here. The afternoons are booked for schools (or in summer, swim schools), after school is booked for swim schools, late evening is booked by adults who are on their way to work at 7am, mornings booked by schools (and summer swim schools), weekends booked for parties.

If you’re looking to go regularly throughout the year it may be that a gym with pool and family membership works better?

My ds swims (5 days a week) at a leisure centre with a 40m pool
split into 2.

from 4pm there’s lesson with the centre down one end and DS swim club down the other (5/6 lanes) and the stage 5/6 leisure centre lessons have an end lane until 6/6.30.

Family swim again at about 7pm.

COVID.
It's wall to wall swimming lessons now to catch up on the backlog.
Where I am, there are Council staffing cutbacks too so the pools are not often open to save £.

I think it started before COVID although I think it's ok in the holidays where I am, and there are a couple of Lidos locally-ish which people can go to all day.

But in term-time it's taken up by swimming lessons - school sessions in schoo-time and lessons start around 4pm and then there's club swimming. I haven't been recently but I found the sweet spot for adult lane swimming about about 2pm on a Monday (or first thing in the morning or last thing at night, eg 8/9pm for an hour) I don't know about taking kids though.

The leisure centre likes the swimming lesson (and club) bookings as it's fairly guaranteed income for them (people can drop in and out of lessons though you used to book on a term basis, now it's monthly).

It was like this 15 years ago when mine were young, only one afternoon when you could go after school and that was a short slot. There were weekend family sessions though. But when I was a committee member of a swimming club we could never get as much pool time as we would have liked either, because they kept it all for centre lessons, the council rebuilt the centre about 10 years ago and we were crying out for 8 lanes but only got 6 which is far too small for a town whose population is growing fast.

They probably make more money from swimming lessons and adult swimmers than they do family swim and families wanting to swim are probably less dependable - if the weather is lovely they might choose to go to the beach/ park etc rather than an indoor pool. To be honest most parents I know don’t want to take their kids swimming either because they don’t want to have to swim themselves, might be there isn’t enough demand.