Meeting of the Parliament 06 January 2026
I wish you, Presiding Officer, and colleagues across the chamber a happy new year from a snowy Shetland.
I thank the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee for its work on this petition. I am pleased to speak in this debate to recognise the value of swimming pools and the call that financial relief is necessary to help to keep pools open.
I also thank Scottish Swimming for providing its briefing and for the work that it does all year round to promote swimming for everyone, which has physical and mental health benefits as well as being a good all-round sporting activity. Those were some of the positive benefits that were highlighted in the 2023 Scottish Liberal Democrat conference debate on swimming and the primary school curriculum.
Swimming provision and equal access to learning to swim is also important for reasons of safety in and around waters. It will come as no surprise that an islander like me is keen to ensure that every child is given the opportunity to learn to swim. It is a lifelong skill that is best learned as a child and one that is not just for people who live in and around island and coastal communities. With rivers and lochs across Scotland that are attractive and accessible from cities and towns, the dangers of water to the inexperienced are not always obvious.
Swimming and other water-related activities mean that more people are making their way to waters for fun, health and wellbeing reasons. As an aside, quite why swimming is referred to as “wild swimming” is a mystery to me. Like others of my generation in Shetland, I learned to swim in the cold North Sea, and it was and still is simply called swimming. I have close friends who are lifelong sea swimmers all year round, though I have not been tempted to join them.
This debate, however, is about the value of swimming pools. In an era of cuts to public services, it might seem to some that funding swimming pools is a luxury that we can live without. I do not share that view, for some of the reasons that I have already mentioned.
I also have a personal reason for ensuring that people have access to public swimming pools. I know at first hand what can happen if you cannot swim. As a child, I accidentally fell into the harbour at Lerwick. Thankfully, I was spotted by a quick-thinking fisherman, who hauled me out. It could have been a different story—I could have been a drowning statistic. To this day, I am not a confident swimmer.
Scottish Swimming indicates that the number of public swimming pools in Scotland is reducing. Of the 295 pools, 122 are more than 38 years old and are therefore nearing the end of their lifespan. According to Swim England, the average lifespan of a pool is 38 years. Based on that age model, Scotland could have a net loss of more than 150 pools by 2040. The estimated investment that is needed for four new pools a year is around £40 million.
In my constituency, swimming pools are run by the Shetland Recreational Trust, which has a network of eight pools across the islands. The two most northerly in the network and, indeed, in the United Kingdom, were both opened in 1988, which takes them to the 38-year lifespan this year.
Increased running costs, as other members have said, are affecting the sustainability of swimming pools across the country, and the biggest impact on those running costs is the cost of energy. It is suggested that an estimated £68 million a year is needed to power Scotland’s pools, though with energy efficiencies and retrofitting with sustainable technologies, around £5 million a year could be saved.
To conclude, supporting our public swimming pools is a lifelong investment in people’s wellbeing and life-saving skills.