Frustration over lack of swimming lessons in Derry after 5pm

At this month’s Health an Community Committee meeting, SDLP councillor Catherine McDaid said she recently attempted to secure a lesson for one of her sons at Foyle Arena and slots were full two minutes after the booking period opened.

She added: “One of my older boys got a slip to say he was moving to Level 5, and when I went to book it there were no slots available after 5 o ‘clock any day of the week, they had all been taken throughout the week.

“For working parents that’s not feasible, and I appreciate it’s maybe not for anyone in this chamber to sort, but I wanted to raise it because it’s really frustrating.

“We need to be making it as accessible as possible for working parents, because whatever time they start at just won’t work for anyone who’s working full-time.

“The staff are brilliant and flexible, but I feel that there just needs to be something done with the booking system to improve it for parents.”

Head of Community Development and Leisure, Barry O’Hagan, said many parents have “shared their frustration with the system” over many years, but the issue was one of supply and demand.

He added: “We try our best to balance the programme across our sites, but we allocate a significant amount of time to clubs and public swimming.”

“We have increased [swimming lessons] over recent years, we have looked at all sorts of weird and wonderful booking systems to try and make it as equitable as possible, but [it’s] simply because we don’t have enough pool time.

“If we were able to double the pool time there would still be issues so it’s not so much the booking system, it’s the demand on our swimming pools.

“I’ll take the information back to the team but this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve received that, and we have sat for many hours to try and resolve this and come to the same conclusion.”

Andrew Balfour,

Local Democracy Reporter.