Staff aim to give pool new lease of life

Members of the pool staff claim that there is still life in Aireville Pool and have joined forces to rejuvenate it in time for the half term and summer holidays.

Staff members think the pool should not just be written off because a new one is in the pipeline, and want the baths to be a clean and pleasant place for everyone until the new development is open.

Interim manager Stephen Barr arrived in Skipton last month and felt as if the pool had been left to run down because of the plans for the new centre.

However, he thought the present pool still had a lot to offer and received the full support of his staff when he announced it was time to give it a facelift.

Swim Into Summer has been launched by the 20 full and part time staff who have divided themselves into working groups to look at how they can revive the pool.

Full time lifeguard Martin Seward, 17, said: "We need something to change as we need to get our customer figures up. If we want private companies to commit and take over the new pool we need to do a good job now."

The three staff teams, supervised by Rod Brown and Mick Aldridge, are looking at building cleaning and maintenance, the programme of lessons and clubs on offer, and marketing and publicity.

Some ideas included approaching Craven District Council, which owns the pool, for money for repainting and decoration, new locks for the lockers, looking at the opening hours to try to give the cleaners more time to do a thorough job, and encouraging more people to use the pool.

Head of swimming Adele Smith, 25, said the pool did not offer nearly enough for local people and she was pleased to have been given the chance to look at introducing sessions for different groups of people.

These could include ante-natal aqua-aerobics, 'Active Lunch' sessions for people on their dinner breaks, ladies only or pensioners only classes, disco diva events for youngsters and lifeguard classes.

There could even be a week long festival of fun and games for young people during the half term holidays.

"No-one has thought 'let's do all this now'. Everything has been geared towards the new pool," said Adele.

Mr Barr, who has worked in leisure centres for the past 30 years, said the pool still had potential even though visitor figures had dropped to an average of 425 people a day.

He added: "We want more people to be active more often. We would be interested to hear from groups of people who do not think their needs are being catered for at the pool."

Head of operations at the council Greg Robinson said lottery money for the new pool, which will be built on land next to the existing centre, had been agreed in principle and the council was looking for private partnership.

However, the pool is not likely to be up and running until autumn 2002.

He added: "I am really pleased with the attitude of the staff at the pool and they are working as a team to reverse the pool's downward trend.

" We know it is not going to be a pool forever but by relaunching it we hope to make it more interesting and win back the customers."