Tamworth Regional Council to close Tamworth Olympic Pool early due to 'combination of factors'

Council's recreation manager Paul Kelly confirmed on Friday Tamworth Olympic Pool will close for the season on Monday, March 7, a month ahead of schedule.

From next week, opening hours will be cut back to morning and afternoon sessions from 5.30am to 9am and then 3pm to 6pm.

Mr Kelly said the decision was made based on a "combination of factors that are interrelated".

"It's to do with our weather cooling, it's to do with not having any pool heating so therefore the water temperature of the pool drops, then our patronage declines," he said.

"When the patronage declines, we don't need the same number of staff and that creates issues because if you're not giving staff the same number of shifts they'd anticipated they tend to find other work and that creates an added stress on remaining staff."

Earlier this month pool users rewrote the lyrics to the Paul Kelly song, To Her Door, in a unique attempt to pressure the council to keep the pool open.

However, Mr Kelly confirmed to the Leader there were no plans at that stage to shut the facility early.

READ ALSO:

On Friday, he said the decision was made after consultation with pool user groups, but with the whole community in mind.

"We appreciate that the decision is not going to make everyone happy, however, we have to make decisions on behalf of the whole of the Tamworth population," he said.

"There's a small number of very vocal people that are passionate about their pool and we love that, however we have to make decisions on behalf of the whole of the community.

"There's 40 to 50,0000 people in Tamworth, not just 10 or 20 early morning swimmers."

Mr Kelly did not respond to questions about how much it would have cost to keep the pool open for the additional month, but said each pool costs roughly $350,000 per year to operate.

Council said it has no plans to shut Scully Pool early.

More to come.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: