Return to Pool
Hello everyone
You may have seen on social media that Buxton Swimming Pool is due to open on Tuesday 1st September, and asking yourself what this means for you as a member of Buxton Swimming Club….well, good news – yesterday we received time slots across a week in which we can hold our club sessions.
Members of the coaching team and the committee have produced the necessary risk assessments in line with the Swim England guidelines and we have had these signed off by the pool management. We have also re-written the club’s Code of Conduct in light of the risk assessments and we will send these to you as the week progresses. Finally, you will also receive a guidance sheet with user friendly instructions on the ‘new’ working ways at the pool and a health declaration form that you must return on the 1st session you come back to swim. No signed form – no swim. We appreciate that you can fill out a form on 1 day to say you are Covid free, and then catch it the next,….so it becomes up to you on a session by session basis to evaluate your own and the swimmers health and not attend if you display any of the symptoms listed on the governmental websites related to Covid-19. We will take a Track n Trace register at the door for every session, and you are signing in each time stating that, to the best of your knowledge, you are Covid symptom free and not serving any quarantine restrictions. We obviously ask for your honesty each session and stay away if you are unsure at all, for the good of all.
Unfortunately a major issue facing the club is that the pool’s opening hours are reduced; week day opening doesn’t start until 7am making our Thursday am training a no go, Mon -Fri evenings is a 8pm close and on a weekend the pool closes at 4pm. The club’s normal timetable just will not be able to exist. The pool have kindly sent us the available slots across a week and I have contacted all of club’s teachers, coaches and volunteers to establish which sessions they can work on; from there we can construct a new pool plan…but this may involve flexibility on our part as swimmers and parents on which sessions we can attend. I should be able to send out the new times for each of our groups over the next few days once we have constructed the weekly programme.
What is going to be very difficult here is that as a club ‘we can’t please all of the people all of the time’; you may see the new timetable and say it doesn’t suit you. That is really tricky for us a club because it is not our doing to have to alter a timetable that pretty much worked before CV-19 arrived – all we can do is create the best fit with the staff and sessions we have and hope that the majority of swimmers can access the water at some point in a week. Some people may be disappointed when they see the new timetable, but please recognise we ha ve done our best. That said, if 10 or 15 of you email in to say that a planned session clashes with scouts, guides or hockey practice (or other) then we will do our best…..but we won’t be able to re-arrange everything for 1 or 2 people.
In terms of fees….once we have created the pool plan and programme we can calculate any adjustments. However, we did ask if the pool operator were putting the hire prices up – yes they have, but we have yet to find out how much.
Can I respectfully ask that you wait until you have read the updated Code of Conduct, guidance sheet, health forms and new timetables before asking/emailing a series of questions. Hopefully everything will be answered in due course.
