public pools should be open later than 5pm on a Saturday

[twoopsie]

I really struggle to get the time to swim. The local pool closes at 10pm during the week and 5pm at the weekend.

Its always pretty busy in the last hour of weekdays and weekends as its lanes.

The running costs for these few hours would easily be made up I'm sure.

Public pools are a right pain to get any swimming done, can never do it in the lunchtime as its either schools or 50+.

Now the kids are in bed I would love to have a 30 main swim then sawna but it closed hours ago

I can't think the lifegards at the pool cost much at all. There is three of them and when one isn't on duty they clean.

With the price of swimming just 4-5 people an hour would cover their wages and reception. During the week there is usually 30+ people in the nightly adults session.

And anyway if its a public service surely the idea is they shouldn't have to always make a profit as the peak periods cover the off peak periods.

DS has said the pool makes more money from swimming lessons, hiring the pool out than public swims. As I said above the pool is closed because it is being used for other things rather than not being used at all. My dd volunteers at the sen swim and my ds did attend the swim club for a little while

Again it isn't really about making money if its a public pool?

Of course it's about money. Its about the most cost effective use of the pool.

Pools are expensive to run, three staff plus a duty manager on site would be at least £60 per hour in staff alone. After 5pm at weekends probably wouldn't be counted as peak period. It is all about the most cost effective use of pool time.

YANBU. Even 6.30pm would make a big difference. My local public pool staff are so lazy that if the pool closes at 5, they stop letting people in at 4.10pm. On the basis that they have to start closing the pool at 4.25pm so they can get home early so that they are in a position to have it closed at 5pm, like it says on the timetable. I bet they get paid til 5.30pm as well. Before Christmas and New Year, they can't be bothered opening at all, so make up a story about the heating failing, and just leave one person on reception to tell people.

My local authority closes public sports facilities on bank holidays! Just when you might actually get a chance to use them, if you have a job. When I asked them about this, they responded that "not everyone works 9-5, Monday - Friday". Oh well, that's ok then!

My local public pool staff are so lazy

Can't see it costing 60 an hour. That would put all staff on double the living wage, when most are teenagers.

My son earns more than the living wage, its a hard job that needs a professional qualification and a lot of responsibility. A teenager was prosecuted for not doing her job properly. He is not allowed to work if he has not done training that month, this qualification needs to be renewed every two years by further testing. He cant work at the moment because his crb ran out on saturday as he was late renewing it.

Do you have any experience of running a pool

I was talking about double living wage though.

The ones in my local pool are pretty useless, they don't even tell off kids that wander into the lanes.

Yes but it doesnt take just lifeguards to run the pool.

TheChandler if they let customers in too close to closing time they complain that they aren't getting their money's worth!

Yes I did used to get paid for 30mins after the pool closed because we had to scrub down poolside (spray, scrub, hose, squeegee), repeat on the whole changing area, and other smaller jobs on top. If we finished 15 mins early we lost 15 mins' pay.

We did open bank hols and got double pay though. I think the pool heating and filtration, centre heating and lighting add substantially to the running costs too. Frankly if swimming pools ran anything like a profit, there would bean awful lot more of them around and we could all swim in the general swim session without constantly bashing elbows.

bruffin clearly I must have been feeling very grandiose when I wrote the above post!

Erin99 Yes I did used to get paid for 30mins after the pool closed because we had to scrub down poolside (spray, scrub, hose, squeegee), repeat on the whole changing area, and other smaller jobs on top. If we finished 15 mins early we lost 15 mins' pay.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. I bet they're the same. They are definitely out there at 5pm or even 4.55pm on the dot. They patrol the changing rooms from 4.30pm onwards to hurry people out of there too. Basically, they put you right off swimming at any time from close to 4pm onwards. They will not let you in after 4.15pm when closing at 5pm, even if you explain you just want to do a few lengths and obviously don't have a family of children in two who want to get their money's worth!

Lifeguard pay is around £10 per hour, duty manager (who may well have started his shift at 5.30 am) is probably around £22k a year.

You're looking at around £300 to £500 k a year to run a reasonably modern 6 lane 25 m pool.

I don't think they earn anything like 10 pH!

www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Lifeguard/Hourly_Rate

The point is the heating and filtration are more or less fixed costs. Would be nice if office e workers could make more use of public servi ces.

Local council here pays £8.53 casual rate for lifeguards, supervisors are £10.20, private places are paying around £10 an hour (that's what I pay for a one off day of cover, mind you I pay our swim teachers way more than the council does too).

Looks like your paying well over the average. I'm sure the teenagers around here would love to earn 10ph as that's what 20k a year, and many graduates are earning less than that.

My pools are closed Xmas eve and nye, I can understand closing early but all day just looks lazy.

Most the teenagers are casual, they go to school and work one or two shifts a week at the most. A shift is 5 to 8 hours. DS doesnt earn £10 an hour but earns him a nice bit of pocket money. As pointed out previously it's not a job anyone can do. YOu have to take the NPLQualification which costs around £200 to start with. It's a hard weeks course with an exam on the final day.You have to be fit and a strongish swimmer.

To be honest i dont really see the point of your answers, you clearly dont know what goes into running a pool/leisure centre and seem to be arguing for arguing sake.

Private gyms are also shut on Xmas eve and NYE and day, as are banks etc etc. I think it's fair not to expect public services to mean they are literally public servants. They have families and need to relax as well. Or you'd have the taxpayers moaning that they have to pay more for BH work.

My gym isn't

My gym closes at 2 on Christmas Eve. I think all gums will be different, but mine is pretty good. We actually spend less money on swimming now!

We belong to a biggish chain (Total Fitness). I guess the small clubs in hotels etc may be different.

The two private gyms around here are open, its just the public centres that are closed. Although the private ones aren't shutting at 4pm and 12 pm