Mid Argyll Swimming Pool Board has now asked Argyll and Bute Council for immediate short term help with its liquidity problem and for consultation to look at bringing stability to the publicly supported facility’s long term future. Councillor Douglas Philand is in discussion with Council Officers on the situation and these discussions are continuing.

The pool has from 38-40,000 users per year. It has 144 children registered for swimming lessons and a waiting list of fifty more. The inspiration for the pool came from the late John MacLean. After saving someone from drowning he became a potent advocate for the need for children in Mid Argyll to learn to swim. After 14 years of fundraising, the Pool opened 13 years ago.

The way the figures stack up quickly demonstrates the difficulty. Operating costs are £170,ooo pa. Trading income – cash at the stiles – is £106,000 pa. Argyll and Bute Council provides an annual subsidy of £46,000. The facility operates with no reserves.

It has lost money in each of the last two years and it has just hit what is its annual low point in cash flow – simultaneously experiencing its lowest income and its highest outgoings. December and January are traditionally low in users and therefore the Pool is down on earned revenue at this time of the year. Because demand is at its lowest at this period it is obviously the best time for repairs and maintenance. The pool opened 13 years ago which means that its plant is ageing and such costs are an increasing annual drain on revenue. Rising fuel costs have only made things worse.

For Argyll has had information on figures obtained from Argyll and Bute Council under the Freedom of Information Act (but not by us) which show the relative running costs of a range of pool facilities across Argyll and the Islands.

One immediate comparison is the annual operating costs of £170,000 for the 20m x 8m Mid Argyll Pool with those of £356,000 for the Council run 25m x 8.5m pool at Rothesay in Bute. Local authorities have to operate under conditions which inevitably make their facilities more expensive but these figures at least demonstrate that the Mid Argyll Pool is run as a pretty tight ship.

A comparison of annual running costs expressed per head of local population per annum also shows the Mid Argyll facility as good value for money against other pools run by the Council, again under Local Authority conditions which are more costly. In the figures given to us, these appear as:

• Mid Argyll Pool: £12 per head per annum
• Helensburgh Pool: £24 per head per annum
• Dunoon Pool: £35 per head per annum
• Rothesay Pool: £38 per head per annum
• Campbeltown Pool: £83 per head per annum

It has to be emphasised that these figures do not compare like with like but they do again show that the Mid Argyll Pool is good value for money, a critical criteria in today’s funding context.

To clarify the fact that the figures above do not compare like with like, Campbeltown’s Aqualibrium, for example (which should win awards for a clever name describing a marriage of library and pool), is a new 25 metre, six lane pool with a raisable floating floor to faciitate disabled access. (It also has a view far too few people know about and fewer talk about – but remarkable in any one’s terms. Breath catching. Go and see it for yourself. It elevates swimming in the pool to a unique experience.)

Obviously For Argyll has not seen the books for the Mid Argyll Pool but an annual operating cost of £170,000, expressed as a cost per visit based on the lower number of 38,000 users would  yield a figure of£4.47. This certainly indicates overall that the facility is run on a best value basis.

It hit a potential financial crisis 5 years ago and was given revenue support from Argyll and Bute Council of £25-40,000 pa. It has had a modest rise in this revenue funding in the last couple of years although this vanished immediately in the maw of rising fuel costs and the repair and maintenance charges for its ageing plant.

The Board of Mid Argyll Pool is not looking for Argyll and Bute Council to adopt the pool. It accepts that this would involve the Council in significant additional annual operating costs at a time of deep recession. It also accepts that the facility, as demonstrated, can continue to be run with greater economy outside the local government sector.

What it seems to be looking for is, as noted above, a short term grant to resolve its immediate and serious liquidity problem and then a greater annual revenue grant toward its operating costs.

The Council, of course, has just used a percentage of its own reserves in adding to the agreed annual budget the necessary monies to allow it to reject a series of proposed efficiency savings which would have included, for example, the closure of the Fyneview respite care facility in Lochgilphead.

This situation is difficult for everyone.

In the end perhaps, a factor in the decision-taking will be the relative lack of places to go and things to do for Mid Argyll’s young people. With the single exception of Helensburgh, no town in Argyll has the population size to sustain the range of resources young people need to absorb their energies and cater for the social needs of their stage in life.

The roof on Lochgilphead’s new High School remains unrepaired a year after being damaged in its first storm. This limits the recreational opportunities available to pupils and the public alike. In this context the loss of the local swimming pool would be a tough hit for young people and for those working to lead the healthy lives now required of us all.

The photograph above – of a standard competition pool and not the Mid Argyll Pool – is by Rufino Uribe and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.