Meeting of the Parliament 06 January 2026
It is harder for people to access swimming pools and lessons just now because, for years, the Scottish Government has made it harder for councils to fund them.
It is important to recognise that swimming pools are expensive to run, and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that energy costs are a significant part of the reason for that. Soaring energy bills over the past few years have resulted in opening hours being cut and temperatures dropping in our pools. Stabilising and reducing energy bills and investing more in clean energy through GB Energy, as the UK Labour Government is doing, therefore needs to be a priority and could help our swimming pools and other sporting facilities.
We should remember that these facilities have survived crises in the past, including energy crises, and they can do so again. Yet, in recent years, they have faced a double whammy from cuts to council budgets and rising energy costs. As a result, in Scotland, the ticking time bomb is louder than ever. As Liz Smith said, we have 295 public pools, and Scottish Swimming estimates that 122 of them are more than 38 years old and coming to the end of their lifespan. Some pools will, inevitably, need to close, but we should be saying that community pools generally need greater protection from closure.
Therefore, we must come together and establish, as has been suggested, a cross-party working group and task force, along with Scottish Swimming and our local councils and leisure trusts, to develop a plan for a sustainable future for swimming in Scotland.
This petition is about more than just bricks and mortar. Swimming pools are a means to an end—boosting physical strength, supporting mental wellbeing and saving lives. Yet, on this Government’s watch, 40 per cent of our children are leaving primary school unable to swim. We are robbing them of their safety in a country where the drowning rate is double the UK average.
My party, Scottish Labour, is fully committed to changing that. We will ensure that every child in primary 5 has a chance to swim and learns the basics of water safety. We will work to fully implement Scottish Swimming’s national primary school swimming framework, which I was pleased to see at first hand at Gracemount leisure centre in December. We will also conduct a national audit of school swimming provision to identify the pupils who are most at risk. Most importantly, we will provide that £6 million investment to make national implementation of school swimming a reality.
After two decades of decline, there is no doubt that public assets such as our swimming pools have never been more under threat, and time is running out to do something about it. I hope that we can agree that we need to work together across the chamber, before and after the election, to secure the future of our swimming pools and give every child the chance to swim.