When did swimming become so expensive?

[MyYoniSaysNoni]

Just took ds and one of his friends to local council run pool. Its alright, nothing fancy. But i thought it would be a nice way to burn off some energy and make a change from kicking a ball in the park.

2 kids plus one adult came to £21.

Ds does swimming lessons at a different pool and they've just sent an email that prices are going up from September. I understand that heating the pool must cost a lot, plus staffing, etc. And we're fortunate that we can afford the increase.

But that MN mantra of 'swimming is an essential life skill and all children should have lessons/frequent family trips to the pool' must surely be increasingly out of reach for many many people.

My local council pool (which isn't run by the council, it's run by a well known leisure chain) charges £55 a month for swimming lessons. That does include free swimming at public sessions, but there aren't that many of those because of clubs, lessons, kids' sessions, sessions for differently abled, etc. So it's pretty expensive.

I don't know what they charge for a general swim.

I said the same thing the other day, our local pool has put its prices up. Not sure what they are spending it on though as the pool is always freezing!

At my local swimming pool it's £21 a month for weekly lessons for DD who's 7months. That's free swimming at public sessions too. It's £27 a month for adults including gym access.

We're in a somewhat deprived area but the leisure centre is great and recently renovated. Always busy too.

Jesus where are you in the UK? Ours charge £4 for me and my son (he is 4 so not sure if they charge extra for when they're older?)

We also pay £66 a term for swimming lessons which is at the local high school and I think it's pretty reasonable.

My local pool is about a fiver a time. I pay £18 for a monthly pass. Bargain.

Bloody hell, where do you live?

One adult plus two children is £11 here.

Our local council pool is 6.70 per adult, £5 per child but if they are part of the swim school they swim for free any other time. I have a gym membership at the same leisure centre so when we go it's free for DS and I which I think is good. DH is on call/works some weekends so DS and I usually go swimming then.

Swimming lessons are 32.50 a month

That's expensive. Just checked mine (council pool run by a leisure trust in the North West) for a general swim (not lessons) and it's £4.50 for standard admission, and £2.90 for under 16s. A family of 2+2 is £13.20 and a family of 2+ 3 is £14.90.

I pay £4.50 which is reasonable

Pools cost a lot to run and staff with life guards? I remember paying £1 when I was a child, it was a cheep trip out for a family, now it’s more expensive but not too bad here. I think a lot of pools put up their prices to encourage people to buy a membership, I think it’s around £18-£22 a months at my load pool.

I pay €26 per week (2 kids so €13 per lesson) for a 30 minute class!!! Absolute rip off

@thaisweetchill i think the question is where are you?! Sounds much cheaper than anything I’ve heard in years!

I pay just under £9 for me and my two DC to go, so prettty reasonable (Midlands)

£21 is outrageous. We were paying £20 for a half hour weekly lesson with one of those private providers- I really think that is extoritionate as well. Progress was not great so we looked at other options and are now pay £25 per month at a local leisure centre which is better quality teaching and DC is enjoying it a lot more. Sometimes you don't get what you pay for! We were lucky to find a place though, I think a lot of people are struggling to get into the local leisure centre classes and the waiting lists are long. I presume a lot of people cancelled over the summer so some spaces came up.

I have attached the prices for our most local pool. It's not available for open swimming that often due to the amount of lessons they do. Swimming lessons are about £35 a month (50 weeks of the year) and the children get free public swimming lessons included in that.

£17.00 for 1 adult and two children in my town, but that's mid week only, there's no 'general swim' swimming at weekends. In fact, you can't swim at all most of the time: it's only open for lanes for an hour or so at the beginning and end of each weekend day. From 10am onwards it's for lessons, parties, and higher cost waves sessions (£19.40, and which are rubbish - they put the waves on twice in the hour for a few mins each time). The deterioration in public swimming availability is rather sad. When I was an early teen, if I and friends wanted to go swimming, we just got a bus down to the pool.

£5.60 for an adult here. It's about £300 for an annual membership for gym / swimming / classes so I don't think that's too bad.

£4.70 for an adult and £4.05 for a child- south east London.
yours is extortionate OP!!!!

Was £13.30 for 2 kids and an adult this weekend.

And 3 years old and under are free.

£20 for two adults and two 6-year-olds today in Bakewell, Derbyshire.

If you think these are high, we have a swimming pool called “ Coral Reef” about 20 mins from us and a family ticket is £60 for a 90 mins.
Adult ticket is around £20, madness.

Our council run pool would usually be just shy of £17 for me and two children. But I’m a regular swimmer there and my monthly pass is just over £20 and the council also run a scheme where children (under 16s) can swim for free but we need to sign up for it before turning up. (Our borough has an obesity problem and they’re trying to do as much as possible to keep kids fit and active).
So although it isn’t actually free for me and the DC (I pay for my pass and DC’s passes come out of council tax) it does feel like a free activity for us and we usually go a couple of times a week.

In my area all kids swims are £1 and adults are £7.

To answer your question, though, YANBU. Swimming has got increasingly expensive, council-run pools are sometimes cheaper because they're subsidised, but it's still a lot dearer than it used to be. Bloody Russians can fuck right off.

Council run? Our local pools were all sold off to be managed and mainly the newer ones owned by private business.