Mike Bird kindly replied a few days ago to my open mail about the Sunday closure at Barr Beacon. I have actually been on holiday so explained to Mike I would post up his reply ASAP.
Thanks Mike for the prompt reply.
Please find below my response with regard to your enquiry in relation to the withdrawal of Sunday swimming at Barr Beacon School.
I can appreciate that a Sunday morning closure may upset some people but most Sundays we could be paying members of the public to swim there. For 8 of the Sunday morning sessions nobody used the pool and for 16 of the sessions only 1 person used the pool. At no time that the pool was open on a Sunday morning for the last three years were the public swimming sessions well attended.
If more people had chosen to swim, there would have been no reason to close the pool. The average number of users for the 9am-10am Sunday morning session is 9, for the 10am- 11 am session it is 7 and for the 11am- 12pm session it is 2. Whilst it must be lovely for the only person using the pool this is not something that we could support. We are actually paying people to use our swimming pool. This is not an appropriate use of public money.
We calculated the driving distance from Pheasey Park Farm (B43 7QQ) and there are 5 local swimming pools that are open on a Sunday morning for public sessions. Perry Beeches pool is a 7 minute car drive, Kingstanding pool is 9 minutes by car, Walsall Gala Baths is a 14 minutes by car, Oak Park 10 minutes drive and to Wyndley Leisure it will take 12 minutes by car.
Yours sincerely
Mike Bird
I have to say though it strengthens my feeling that as the closest pools are Birmingham run that we really need to progress that discussion over the next years.
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