Local authorities are being asked to shell out to cover the rising utility bills of our community swimming pools.

In October of last year, Tynwald approved an increase to the gas tariff - a factor cited by swimming pool boards as the major contributor to an overall rise in operational costs.

When community swimming pool operators reached out to the Department of Education, Sport and Culture to increase their annual swimming pool subvention accordingly, they were told no further funding would be available for the coming financial year.

In a letter to the manager of the Western Swimming Pool, government minister Julie Edge advised the board to ’consider a consultation with its local authorities to increase rates’.

Each community swimming pool operates independently, but their reactions were similar.

Commissioner Juan McGuinness, who sits on the Northern Swimming Pool board, said: ’I think the northern authorities were surprised at the timing, that the DESC refused to increase our budget to meet what are effectively rising prices from gas for the majority of our costs, and other costs are out of our control.

’I think it’s incredibly difficult as a pool board to manage our conflicting requirements - to keep the facility running, our statutory obligations, but also to balance that with our roles as commissioners, and understand that during a pandemic the increasing costs across the board have to be met by the people of the north rather than centrally’.

He explained that they had lodged an objection with the government for changing the pool rates, and questioned why the DESC had ’refused’ to increase its budget.

Peel commissioner Mike Wade shared the Western board’s reaction: ’It was a shock, the amount of money [we now have to] find per year is absolutely jaw-dropping - £37,000 was added to the Western Swimming Pool’s heating bill.

’So the pool management approach government for extra funding, and they basically said "no". The [western] local authorities should only pay 2.5p per pound from their rates towards the pool - and that’s an act of Tynwald.’

Castletown commissioner Colin Leather pointed out that the original 2p rate that was set when the Southern pool was built had never taken the intervening inflation into account, and so the contribution of southern local authorities had actually fallen.

He said that taking this into account meant that the board did not consider it ’to be much of a burden’ to pay the new rate of 6p.

Education, Sport and Culture Minister Julie Edge MHK said that ’everyone on the island who uses gas is in the same boat, not just the swimming pools’ and that she would expect the pool boards to ’manage their budgets’ themselves.

She pointed out that the Tynwald Act could be changed to allow for a rise, and called the existing £500,000 subvention ’generous’.