Elite School of Swimming has been forced to close the business after being left without a home, and high overheads proving to be a prohibitor to taking on the pool at Gurnard Pines on a full repair lease.
The swimming school has been unable to operate since the collapse of the Gurnard Pines complex leaseholder’s company, leaving them without access to the swimming pool they have used for around 18 hours a week for lessons.
The owner of Gurnard Pines has now offered to allow them to operate the swimming pool themselves, but the school say the running costs are too high for this to be economically feasible.
Directors Melissa and Paul have said:
“The Landlord (GUPI Properties Ltd) has asked whether Elite School of Swimming (IW) Ltd would like to take over the swimming pool operation and its entire running costs. We have carefully looked into the running costs together with repairs and maintenance required and have concluded that with deep regret, this is not a business proposition we can enter into and make work.
“From April this year, the Government is scaling back its Energy Support Scheme and the Leisure sector is set to lose out. This will mean that from April, energy costs for running the pool will double from their already extremely high levels. Swim England, The Local Government Association and other leading organisations are lobbying the Government to try and get swimming pools reclassified as ‘energy intensive’ – like Museums and Libraries – so that they qualify for a higher level of discount on their energy prices. It remains to be seen whether anything will be agreed on this.
“Elite School of Swimming utilised the pool for 18 hours a week. A pool of this size needs to be open in excess of 12 hours a day, and this would result in the pool operator needing to find a lot of pool activity to fill this void. Our lessons are full to capacity and operate over 6 days a week at times when children are available for swimming lessons. The pool time not utilised for swimming lessons would have to be filled to capacity with other pool users and member swim times.
“When the previous Leaseholders Company went into liquidation, all Swim & Gym Memberships were cancelled, so as things stand, the pool at Gurnard currently has no swim members. Any pool operator now looking to take on the pool operation will be reliant on swim members returning and agreeing to a new membership, as there is no membership list to work from.
Article continues below this advertisement “We have therefore had to make the extremely hard decision to stop our swimming lessons for the time being. If someone comes forward to take over the pool operation and its entire running costs, we will of course seek agreement with them to continue our successful lessons at Gurnard Pines. In the meantime, we will explore continuing our lessons at other venues.
“We are completely devastated that we cannot continue the lessons and very sad that for the time being our thriving business has to be put on hold for reasons outside of our control. Both ourselves and all our teachers are absolutely gutted that we will not be seeing all the children’s smiling faces and having so much fun in the water whilst learning such a valuable life skill that they will benefit from throughout their lives.
“We would like to thank our clients so much for their continuous support over the years, both in good times and especially during the hard times through the pandemic. Without you, we would not have been able to build such a successful business for ourselves and provide such a vital service to the local community.”
Melissa has made the following video to thank her clients for their support:
Blatant profiteering.
Energy companies are making record profits.
Tax them to the hilt and invest that money back into the community.