In the past couple of months, Jamie McGrigor, Highlands & Islands MSP, has had more emails from constituents on the subject of the threatened Mid Argyll Swimming Pool than on any other issue.

Add this to the fact that the Board of the Pool has already secured around 2,000 signatures on its petition for serious support from Argyll & Bute Council  and the picture of solid community need for the facility could not be more clear.

The pool has served the Mid Argyll community of 9,000 since 1996, employing 8 full time and 3 casual staff and producing a tradin income of around £100,000 pa.

The concern of the petitioners is twofold:

• to extend immediate funding of £10,000 to save the pool from loss-driven closure in December;
• to increase the pool’s meagre revenue-grant by £30,000 a year to secure its future into the medium and long term. It’s current grant – which expires in March 2010, is around £48k pa.)

Rather than tread the same water plumbed in previous articles we have published on this subject, we have been scrutinising the detail of the Board’s report on the situation. The resulting analysis has identified the core issues that require to be addressed without delay.

There is a primary matter of very real concern.  A new Board came onstream in March this year in response to a crisis that saw the bank refusing to honour payments because an overdraft limit had been breached. This new Board inherited not only administrative and financial chaos but an alarming staff deficit.

This left the  members of this new Board not just managing a crisis they but actually running the operations of the facility. They know that they cannot continue to carry these unanticipated responsibilities and it is unthinkable that they should be left to do so. They are all volunteers.

It is to the enduring credit of this Board that, in the short time it has been in office, it has remedied some glaring deficiencies in the previous administration. Among many others, these redemptions have ranged:

• from the astonishingly basic – such as getting in an electronic till to record and receipt daily cash transactions;
• to the technicalities of the pools operations – such as carrying out an audit of plant and equipment and dealing with the sorry story that resulted in implementing long overdue maintenance, with more to come;
• to accounting for the financial situation of the pool and paying off a £14,000 overdraft and conducting a full financial audit;
• to thinking  inventively on new revenue generation by offering the facility as an operational base for appropriate outside events such as the Mid Argyll Triathlon;
• to preparing a detailed report and recommendations on the situation from staffing, to maintenance, to finance and to market building.

The report wants to see a strategic and structured approach to staffing, with:

• empty posts filled;
• an effective rota in place;
• the recruitment of reserve staff to cover maternity leave (2 key members of staff are currently off on such leave) and other emergencies;
• more training and accreditation;
• better pay (staff are currently paid little above the basic wage);
• the possibility of a career development structure to incentivise staff.

The analysis contained in the Board’s report is focused and telling. It identifies the core deficits within and without the facility that together leave it limping to closure unless they are confronted.

There is an indefensible disparity between the revenue support for the Mid Argyll Pool and other public pools in operation across Argyll. Why this is so is irrelevant. In simple parity of provision, it is not acceptable and it must be redressed.

The disparities are two-sided though, as the Mid Argyll Pool should be able to earn more and there can be no doubt that the right management can achieve this. Some useful comparison from the year 2006/2007 to back up these last position statements are:

• The Mid Argyll pool cost £170,132 to run, earned £106,542 and was subsidised at 27% by the Council with core funding of £46,200 for a population of 9,000.
• The pool at Rothesay on Bute cost £356,196 to run, earned £93,682 and was subsidised at 74% by the Council with core funding of £262,154 for a population of 7,000.
• The pool on Islay cost £249,603 to run, earned £184,638 and was subsidised at 26% by the Council with core funding of £67,686 for a population of 3,000.

Two things are important to note in respect of these figures.

• The running costs of the Mid Argyll pool may seem comparatively low because due maintenance was not addressed under the administration of the day.
• The Board of the Mid Argyll pool is now seeking overall core funding of around £78,000

There is a need to build up financial reserves to see the pool able to respond to sudden cash calls on, for example, equipment failures and maintenance requirements.

The staffing situation requires firm resolve to bring to an immediate end the cripping position where the Pool Manager has been on sick leave for no less than eighteen months. There are bound to be legal tripwires in such a picture – but allowing this to continue any longer is self-mutilating for both the member of staff concerned and for the organisation.

To be blunt,there is no way back from this situation. Anyone who has been off work for so long a period is not going to come back with the energetic attack that the pool needs to drive and connect with new markets and to run it as an efficient, well maintained, welcoming and innovative community resource.

The rights and wrongs of whatever happened at the start of this foolish situation are irrelevant when set against the imperative to bring it to an end and let the individual and the pool move on.

Argyll and Bute Council has been extending welcome assistance to the Board – and tribute is paid to that in the report. The part-time secondment of assistance with operational management, itself of recent origin, is an alleviation of very real strain rather than a solution.

The right staff need to be recruited an d in place without delay. Reserve staff to enable smooth continuation of services need to be trained and available as soon as possible,.

The Board itself has been energetically investigating sources of supplementary funding. Jamie McGrigor, pictured above last Friday with staff at the pool, has not only written to Sally Reid, CEO of Argyll & Bute Council, he too is investigating possible funding to assist the pool.

Whatever supplementary funding can be attracted to this most worthwhile facility will enable its development and perhaps its diversification.It will not, though, secure its guaranteed continuation. This can only be achieved through assured and adequate revenue funding.

The committed users of the pool deserve and hope for reassurance in continuing access to this facility. They include those to whom the Board envisages offering extended access – like the disabled, (through PACT) and young people living locally (through the Youth Project). They are pupils at Mid Argyll schools learning to swim; the elderly, the housebound and the deskbound determined to maintain fitness and develop confidence.

Argyll and Bute Council issues a statement saying: ‘Mid Argyll Community Enterprises Ltd has made a request to the Council for extra funding – both in the short and longer term.

‘Argyll and Bute Council currently provides an annual grant of £48,394 to the company. We have also paid £13,118 for the delivery of Primary School swimming lessons, in advance, for the school session August 09-June 10.

‘In support of its request, the company has produced a document which projects its financial position to March 31 2010. We have asked that it provides a projection outlining its longer term financial prospects, which would be a basic requirement of the Council’s standard service level agreement. Without such information, we are not in a position to appraise the grounds for its request.

‘We understand that the company is currently compiling such a business plan projection which will be passed to us at the earliest opportunity’.

For Argyll is aware from the Board for that the Council has asked for this additional financial detail, that it is working to provide this and and that it is rightly pushing for a date for a decision.

Everyone knows that the Council itself is facing very straightened circumstances with the recession and the financially necessary Government block on Council Tax rises – but this is a core community facility – there is no public pool for 40 miles.

The additional costs involved in the requested rise in core revenue funding (or Service level Agreement – SLA) is modest. Moreover, as demonstrated in the comparisons outlined above in support to other pools in Argyll, this should have been granted at this proportion from the outset.

The saving of this facility and its establishment on a secure footing to carry it into the future is not a matter for debate. It is a sine qua non. We need to see the Council and the Board together simply accept that and get on with a sensible implementation of such a resolve.

Add your name to the Board’s online petition.

Update: Jamie McGrigor, Highlands & Islands MSP, has tabled a Parliamentary Motion on the matter which is already attracting cross-party support. Read about this here.

Related Posts

• McGrigor tables Parliamentary Motion on Mid Argyll Swimming Pool (1)
• Mather’s Meeting on Mid Argyll Swimming Pool tonight (2)
• Meeting of minds on Mid Argyll Swimming Pool (3)
• Save Our Pool: the day Mid Argyll became a community (17)
• Join the Demo of the year for Mid Argyll Swimming Pool (4)

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