Reading passage
In the centre of Milltown, a small town in the north of England, there is a swimming pool that has served local people for more than sixty years. The pool was opened in 1963, after a long campaign by residents who wanted a safe place for children to learn to swim. At that time, many families in the town did not have baths at home, so the new building, with its warm water and clean changing rooms, was seen as a great improvement in public life.
The building itself is simple. It has one main pool, which is twenty-five metres long, and a smaller pool for young children. There are changing rooms, showers, and a small cafe where visitors can buy drinks and snacks. The pool is owned by the local council, but since 2010 it has been managed by a charity called Milltown Leisure Trust. The trust employs twelve full-time staff and around thirty part-time workers, most of them local people.
Every week, about three thousand people use the pool. Early in the morning, before work, the pool is busy with adults who swim lengths to keep fit. During the day, schools bring classes of children for swimming lessons, which are part of the national school programme. In the evening, there are sessions for families, and on Saturday mornings the pool is full of children aged four to eleven learning to swim with qualified teachers.
Learning to swim is the most important service the pool offers. According to the trust, about nine out of ten children in Milltown can swim twenty-five metres by the time they leave primary school, compared with a national average of around seven out of ten. Teachers at the pool say that small classes and regular lessons are the reason for this success. Each class has no more than eight children, and pupils attend once a week for a full year.
The pool also plays a role in public health. Doctors in the town sometimes advise patients with back problems or joint pain to exercise in water, because swimming is gentle on the body. The trust runs special sessions for older people and for those recovering from operations. One study by the local university found that regular swimmers over the age of sixty visited their doctor less often than people of the same age who did no exercise.
Swimming is not only a sport; it is also a matter of safety. Britain is an island, and nobody lives very far from water, whether it is the sea, a river, or a canal. Every year, accidents happen when people who cannot swim fall into deep water. The trust works with a national charity to teach water safety in schools, and every summer it runs free taster sessions for adults who never learned to swim as children. Around two hundred adults have taken part in the last three years.
Running a pool is expensive, however. Heating the water and the building costs a lot of money, and energy prices have risen sharply in recent years. In 2022, the trust spent nearly 180,000 pounds on gas and electricity alone. To pay its bills, the trust depends on entry fees, swimming lessons, and a grant from the council. It also raises money through events, such as a sponsored swim every spring, which last year brought in over 12,000 pounds.
There have been difficult moments. In 2015, the council announced that it could no longer afford to support the pool, and there was talk of closing it. Local people responded quickly. A petition collected more than 8,000 signatures in three weeks, and several businesses offered to help. In the end, the council agreed to continue its grant for five more years, and the pool stayed open.
Today, the trust has plans to improve the building. It wants to put solar panels on the roof to reduce energy costs, and to build a small gym next to the cafe. The manager, Sarah Owen, says the aim is simple: to keep the pool open for another sixty years. This place, she says, is part of the town's history, and for many families learning to swim here is a tradition that passes from grandparents to parents to children.