Council Sport Provision

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

I want to raise the issue of councils inflicting an enforced monopoly, run by a private sector provider, on the community, often crushing successful and voluntary provision. The specific case that I will discuss relates to sport—specifically swimming—which is relevant to my constituency and others, including that of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). I would be interested to hear of any other such cases. The Minister responded to yesterday’s Adjournment debate, so I am particularly grateful to him for his presence for the second day running. I reassure him that this debate is not about sport as such—although the subject has a powerful impact on sport—but is far more about procurement and tendering practice.

I declare an informal interest in this subject, which centres on the crushing of swimming club provision, in that I used to be a swimmer, but sadly I am not as fit any more. As a youngster I ploughed up and down swimming pools at silly o’clock in the morning for four hours a day—and sometimes 10 times a week— in my unfortunately thwarted hope of becoming an Olympian. My skin would smell of chlorine when it rained and I had perpetual goggle marks. For many years I swam under the excellent supervision of one of Bristol’s finest coaches, Eric Henderson.

Being part of a club was part of my identity when I was growing up. It was a proper community and I am still proud of and treasure my first swimming club tracksuit from Thornbury swimming club. It was very much part of what has made me who I am, and it all started when my mum took me to a club to learn to swim.

Learning to swim and making progress with clubs is not for everyone, but it is a vital part of a choice of provision. It is particularly vital for producing our next generation of competitive swimmers, and it is also important—as illustrated by the Portway swimming club in my constituency, which will feature heavily in my speech—for non-competitive swimmers who want to swim slightly more than is possible under council or private provider provision.

The good news is that clubs are generally thriving and many have waiting lists for their Learn to Swim programmes, particularly those for beginners. That is why the phenomenon of some councils acting to stifle successful club provision is so perverse, as the situation in Bristol illustrates.

In 2007, Bristol city council secured a contract with Sports and Leisure Management to run eight leisure centres in the city for 10 years. So far, so good. That was supposed to be done in partnership with the city council, which, despite the fact that it had outsourced provision to a private provider, still took it upon itself to prescribe in some detail how the provision was to be made.

Swimming in Bristol has not had a particularly happy history, as a Google search or a trawl through newspapers from the mid-’90s will reveal. A recent attempt to reshape the city’s swimming came in the form of the now slightly notorious—in Bristol swimming circles—Rick Bailey report. One recommendation was that the council provider’s chief responsibility should be to provide levels 1 to 7 of the Amateur Swimming Association’s Learn to Swim pathway. Again, so far so good.

However, Bristol city council interpreted that recommendation—I believe perversely—as meaning that only the private provider should provide levels 1 to 7 of Learn to Swim. That recommendation did not have the support of the local swimming clubs, but they were pushed into accepting it largely because they did not have any choice or voice to change the decision, despite rather cosy talk in all the documents of “partnership working”.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing this matter to the House. In my constituency, Ards borough council has a very good relationship with the local swimming club. They work together to ensure that everybody has an opportunity to swim. The council owns the premises and Ards amateur swimming club does the renting. Does she agree that that is a prime example of what can happen if a council and a club work together for the benefit of all, so that some young people can become champions, whether provincial, Commonwealth or Olympic?

[Charlotte Leslie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. What is so sad about this case is that, as he said, when clubs, councils and private providers work together, they can become more than the sum of their parts and there can be huge success stories. All parties should have the interests of children and swimming, or whatever sport it is, at their centre. What is so tragic about this case is that for some reason that I am yet to fathom, Bristol city council has been stubbornly determined to stifle good provision and not to work in partnership with clubs. When any objection is raised, it says that the clubs should know better and that it does work in partnership. However, as we know, partnership is not just a word in a report, but involves communication, liaising and understanding from both sides. This situation does not need to exist and we should all be thinking about the good of the swimmers.

The council and SLM set about ensuring that even clubs that had been providing a successful and valued Learn to Swim programme, with high demand and waiting lists, no longer did so in council-run pools. That has led to an extraordinary situation at swimming clubs such as Portway in my constituency that hire an agreed amount of pool time from SLM in which intermediate and Learn to Swim swimmers both train. Following the ruling that came into force on 1 April, the club is forced to vacate the area of the pool that is used for Learn to Swim. The children, many of whom have older siblings in the more advanced swimming lessons, are forced to sit on the side and not enter the water because they cannot be taught to swim, even though the qualified volunteer teachers are present and the pool space is not being used by anyone else. If the young children were doing another activity, such as attending a children’s party, and were not being taught to swim, it would be okay for them to use the pool. That does not seem very sensible.

The club has been forced to take its Learn to Swim programme to a pool in a neighbouring local authority, South Gloucestershire, which has a slightly less perverse and draconian attitude towards Learn to Swim. That means an extra journey for parents to a pool that is much further away, which is very difficult for single parents. That may also clash with the commitments of other siblings, swimming or otherwise, and many parents are forced to choose which of their children’s commitments to honour.

The key thing to note is that the small number of children who are being taught to swim in a club environment, which cannot be replicated by a private provider in terms of the continuity and focus that are provided by the teachers, does not impact on SLM’s market share of Learn to Swim children. The number of children in Bristol is increasing and there are certainly more than enough children who need to be taught to swim to go around.

Nobody is suggesting that clubs should have a monopoly on provision or even preferential treatment, only that they should be allowed to meet the significant demand for their services, which they have hitherto met very successfully. The result is that children are denied the choice of the benefits that club swimming at an early level provides, such as community and continuity of teaching. One club coach put it well in saying that the two lessons a week at the club not only give children the ability to swim, but inspire them to become a swimmer.

Of course, the impact on competitive swimming will be significant, too. To put it in perspective, in a recent Bristol schools competition, it was estimated that despite there being about 3,000 children who were taught by SLM compared with only 200 who were taught in clubs, club swimmers made up about 50% of the finalists. In other words, if my maths is correct, club swimmers were about seven times more likely to be finalists than non-club swimmers, which is significant.

There are other impacts. Many coaches come through a club system and then go on to coach either in their parent club or in other clubs, or with private providers such as SLM. Clubs are also vital social and community hubs, raising money for charity and, as I have said, providing youngsters with a sense of special identity and pride, as Thornbury, Southwold and City of Bristol swimming clubs did for me.

However, the Minister will be pleased to hear that this debate is not specifically about sport. It serves to demonstrate to him the possible perversity of a council monopoly that is imposed with such odd determination. Indeed, the clubs, the provider, a representative of Gloucester ASA and the councillor with the relevant cabinet brief had a meeting about the matter, at which the councillor, Simon Cook, was extremely good. He brokered a proper, common-sense solution to allow one of the clubs to keep offering Learn to Swim in a council pool until some kind of common-sense compromise had been reached. I was alarmed that his decision was completely ignored, which shows us something about the accountability there. It was ridden roughshod over, particularly by one council officer, Colleen Bevan, who I understand has now gone off to work for a private leisure provider. The private providers told the club that contrary to what had been agreed in the meeting, it could not continue with its pool time. I should mention that we have set up a petition at www.keepclubswimming. bristolpetitions.com, in case anyone wants to sign it.

I finish by saying to the Minister that we all believe in localism, but this case demonstrates some of the perverse behaviour of councils that, instead of facilitating the big society, are crushing it. I am pleased that our new elected mayor, George Ferguson, who inherited the difficult situation, is sympathetic to the clubs’ plight and fully understands the perversity of such a council-enforced monopoly, whether in sport or any other service. I look forward to working with him on this extraordinary situation.

I ask that the Department examines such instances in which smaller providers of any sort, not necessarily in sport, are literally bullied out of existence by local councils that act in every way contrary to any conception of the big society.