Swimming for young children

[Downtown36]

I was excited to take my 4 year old swimming again - but I have just looked at a few local leisure centres and none of the training/shallow pools are open. It seems to be only lane swimming, and children are permitted but need to be competent swimmers.

I'm just frustrated - is this the same around the country?

Ours is back open for family swim time. Hopefully yours is just being overcautious and changes with the next wave of restrictions loosening ☹️

No, I'm taking my daughter and her friend (age 7 and 8) to a fun swim tomorrow

Nope. A lot of the day time fun sessions are over most toddler’s nap time which seem ridiculous but sessions with pool toys are on.

All leisure centres local to me are open for lane swimming only. I book for my 3 weekly swims but cannot take my kids. Our learner/shallower pool was last open in February 2020. It was closed prior to lockdown for a pump issue. Never opened last year apart from lane swimming and you have to be a competent swimmer and barely stop. I have a moan every visit but get the same reply of ‘we can only operate limited services to keep us safe’. Madness along with the Children’s centres.

I'm just frustrated - is this the same around the country?

No, not in London. DH took the 4 year old DD for a swim today. The training pool was fully open. So were the changing rooms.

According to him, it was a completely normal experience - just fewer people in the pool and we had to book a time slot.

Glad others are going and hopefully it will change locally soon. All 3 pools I’ve checked (different chains) don’t have sessions in the training/shallow pool at the moment.

Our closest pool doesn’t have a training pool but does some family lane swim sessions where you get a lane just for your family. Our next closest one also does family swims with a lane of the main pool or section of the training pool

Ours has three pools, the main pool is Lane swimming, the teaching pool I think is being split in to sections and you can book one section for a 'family bubble' and the leisure pool is open as usual but I don't know if they are operating the slides and wave machine.

Our local council leisure centre is open, including all three pools. You have to book and numbers are limited but it's open for everyone. Hope you find somewhere soon 🙂

Only lane swimming here too. It's encouraging that other places are doing family swims

Last year none of our local pools reopened in the way that kids could have a splash around. It was all lane swimming for competent swimmers. V unfair. I looked the other day and most pools are still doing this but hoping they reinstate the Sunday morning family swims with noodles/floats available etc.

This post prompted me to look and all 6 of our local pools, which includes 2 Council run leisure centres and 4 pools operated by different private companies are not doing children's swimming sessions. Our only options at all 6 pools are lane swimming. I'm actually pretty surprised they seem so limited compared to other areas.

round here it's only lane swimming for grown ups and lessons for smalls.

Training pool open here, I’m delighted as it means we can take DD (8 months) for her first swim next weekend. It’s such an important life skill, getting them used to the water from an early age is crucial. I’d be very upset if our pool wasn’t open for kids.

Our huge pool has a few sessions a week of family swim however they only allow TWO families to book at any one time. Despite it being a massive pool with a huge amount of individual changing cubicles. It's therefore almost impossible to get a slot.

We don't open til next week but the swimming pool timetable has "adult & child" sessions on the timetable which specifies it will be a double width lane but they don't have to be lane swimming. There's 2 or 3 of those sessions most days and also "family fun" is on a couple of sessions at weekends. Kids are welcome in at other times apart from the sessions specified as "adult only" but they are expected to swim lengths.

Yes same here, it's really annoying. Kids pools only open at the weekend when I don't want to take him.

Whoops wrong thread

We have family swims our way

It's hit and miss.

Our most used pool basically do a private hire of half the two shallower pools. It's not a cheap option.

At least my DCs have had lessons on/ off since Sept, but they haven't had a casual session since Mar 2020 because of a lack of practical opportunities.

Our local pool was adults only last time but looks like there will be some family swims if you can by some miracle book them. Realistically lessons are your best bet for access to a pool as otherwise it seems far too tricky to actually get a slot unless you are there at midnight on the right day the tickets are released.

Our local authority has very grudgingly opened up their pools, for lane swimming only. This means that kids are effectively unable to swim, and have been since the pools were first closed over a year ago.

I've written to the Head of Leisure to complain, and have also also asked how their current schedule allows them to satisfy their obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty. It's pretty blatant age discrimination as far as I'm concerned.

@Sleeptillnoon very interesting, and that’s exactly how I’ve been left feeling - essentially many young children cannot access pools under the current set up.

So glad many are able to book but it seems very inconsistent.

@Downtown36 I've become quite the complainer during lockdown I would encourage you to drop your council a line if you feel the same way. I'm pretty sure our leisure team would like to open up the pools but I have a feeling that the local public health team are the ones holding them back, so if nothing else the correspondence from service users will help to provide some balance. I pointed out that neighbouring LAs with higher Covid rates than ours were offering public sessions, so there must be a way to do it safely.