Community benefit of Isle of Man swimming pools outweighs losses

Regional pools will be underwritten by the government for the next 12 months

The community benefits of regional swimming pools on the Isle of Man "far outweigh any need to balance the books", a Ramsey commissioner has said.

A review into local authority-run facilities in Castletown, Peel and Ramsey was announced this week.

It comes after the government boosted its £1.7m subvention for the pools by £300,000 due to rising energy bills.

Northern Swimming Pool chairman Juan McGuinness said the facilities were not designed to be self-funding.

An annual subsidy is paid by the Department of Education, Sport and Culture (DESC) to help meet shortfalls in pool costs, with other funds provided through local authority rates.

After initially rejecting a call for a greater subvention from pool boards to cover the cost of increased energy prices, the government agreed to underwrite them for the next 12 months.

The additional funding will coincides with an external review into their long-term future.

'Absolute asset'

Mr McGuinness told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the funding issue was a "strange, self-created crisis" by the DESC, as the swimming pool subvention "has not increased very much if at all in last 10 years".

He said the "unprecedented level of energy bill increases" is all that had changed but there was no expectation that income generated from the pool would match the rises in gas and electricity prices.

Education Minister Julie Edge told the House of Keys the review would consider "all scenarios", but said it would not cover the government-run pool at the National Sports Centre in Douglas.

Mr McGuinness said he was pleased for the "wonderful" staff at the northern facility that funding had been secured for a further year, adding he was not concerned about the review's outcome.

"It should show that the northern pool is a brilliantly-run facility and an absolute asset for the north of the island."