Price Changes – September 8th 2025
Our challenge to make Birtley Community Pool financially sustainable
Our first year has been very challenging from a financial perspective. We knew from the start that achieving financial sustainability would be a huge challenge, as this was the reason why Gateshead Council closed the pool in July 2023. The council had made significant operating losses at Birtley Swimming Centre for many years, including a loss of £349,000 in the year to 31st March 2020, which was the last year that the pool was running with normal opening hours prior to COVID 19.
We have made significant cost savings in our first year, compared to the costs that Gateshead Council were incurring. These include the following major improvements:
- Electricity consumption has been reduced by 49%, by replacing the existing lighting with more efficient LED lighting, reducing the pool circulation pump frequency overnight to 50% and not using the air handling units overnight
- Gas consumption has been reduced by 19% due to replacing the old, inefficient boilers and water heaters with new assets
- Repairs and maintenance costs have been reduced by 70% by using appropriately skilled trustees, volunteers and pool management to make many of the repairs free of charge, rather than contractors
- As a charity, we are exempt from paying business rates. Gateshead Council paid £37k for business rates each year
- Employment costs have been reduced by 47%, mainly through optimising shift rotas, and paying salaries at rates which are competitive and in line with the Community Leisure sector
- The other main employment cost reduction has been to use unpaid trustees and volunteers for many of the functions that Gateshead Council’s employees performed, such as Finance, Payroll, HR, Facilities Maintenance, most of the repairs to our assets and working on reception at busy times.
- We have also experienced some additional costs compared to the Council, notably a 50% increase in the gas price and significantly higher insurance costs as a standalone entity.
Financial results for our first year of operation
We have just finalised our financial results for our first year to 31st March 2025, following completion of a financial review by an independent chartered accountant. Our charity accounts, and the Trustees Annual Report, were submitted to the Charity Commission on August 28th 2025 and copies are available on our website or in paper form at reception. The financial information in the next two paragraphs is drawn from these two documents.
We incurred £63.2k of operating costs for the period from when we took over the running of the pool from the Council on May 31st 2024, up to when we opened the pool to the public on September 16th 2024. These included employment costs for the staff we recruited from July 2024 onwards. We also incurred expenditure on chemicals, electricity, gas, water, insurance, materials and equipment and some initial repairs during the same period. We had anticipated that we would incur significant pre-opening costs and had raised funding to cover these costs.
From mid-September 2024 to the end of March 2025, we also made a significant operating loss of £69k. These initial trading losses were higher than we expected, and they were only partly covered by funds we had raised in advance. However, additional donations were made by some individuals and from other sources to cover the additional losses.
We have made further losses in the period from April 2025 to July 2025, although these have been reducing in size, as our costs reduce in the summer months and our income has increased due to more customer footfall. We have also been identifying opportunities to further reduce costs and are in the process of implementing the required improvements. Unfortunately, these efficiencies will not be sufficient to ensure our income covers our costs through the autumn and winter, when our costs increase and customer footfall tends to reduce, particularly in December.
We need to increase our prices from Monday 8th September 2025
We therefore need to increase our prices by an average of 10% in September to increase our income, so that it will cover our operating costs going forward. The impact on individual session prices and on swimming membership costs is not significant, as you can see from the table in the next section.
Individual session prices will typically increase by 50p and our monthly membership price will increase by £3. The price increase for members direct debit payments will be implemented from October, giving members a month’s notice if they wish to cancel their membership.
We are also increasing our charges to the organisations which hire the pool by a similar percentage.
We have compared our new prices to the prices charged by other nearby pools for similar activities, and we are confident that our prices will still be competitive. We have also produced a detailed forecast of our financial results and cashflow to the end of March 2026, which incorporates this price increase. This has demonstrated that our income from customers will cover our costs from September 2025 onwards. If we keep our prices the same, we will not be able to cover our operating costs over this coming winter.
Birtley Community Pool prices from September 2025
The new prices are shown on the table below, together with the existing prices and the percentage increase for each type of activity
| Activity type | Birtley Community Pool current price | Birtley Community Pool price from September 2025 | % increase |
| Adult swim | £5.00 | £5.50 | 10.0% |
| Adult swim 12pm to 4pm weekdays | £4.00 | £4.40 | 10.0% |
| Junior swim | £3.00 | £3.30 | 10.0% |
| Junior under 3 | £1.00 | £1.00 | 0.00% |
| Adult family fun | £5.00 | £5.50 | 10.0% |
| Junior Family fun | £4.50 | £5.00 | 11.1% |
| Adult and junior family fun – member | £4.00 | £4.50 | 12.5% |
| Family Swim 2 adults & 2 children | £14.00 | £15.50 | 10.7% |
| Family Swim 2 adults & 1 child | £12.00 | £13.00 | 8.3% |
| Family Swim 1 adult & 2 children | £9.00 | £10.00 | 11.1% |
| Aquafit | £7.00 | £7.50 | 7.1% |
| Aquafit member | £5.00 | £5.00 | 0.0% |
| Aquafit block of ten | £63.00 | £68.00 | 7.9% |
| Aquafit member block of ten | £45.00 | £49.00 | 8.9% |
| Pool parties with inflatables & waterslide | £250.00 | £275.00 | 10.0% |
| Membership – adult | £26.99 | £30.00 | 11.1% |
| Membership – junior | £20.00 | £22.00 | 10.0% |
| Membership – 1 adults 1 child | £40.00 | £44.00 | 10.0% |
| Membership – 1 adults 2 children | £60.00 | £66.00 | 10.0% |
| Membership – 2 adults 1 child | £65.00 | £71.00 | 9.2% |
| Membership – 2 adults 2 children | £85.00 | £93.00 | 9.4% |
| Membership – 2 adults 3 children | £105.00 | £115.00 | 9.5% |
| Membership – 2 adults 4 children | £125.00 | £137.00 | 9.6% |
We appreciate that increasing prices is not ideal but we believe that this is necessary to ensure the pool is financially sustainable and remains open for the future. We hope that you will continue to come to the pool after we have increased our prices, to continue enjoying the benefits of swimming in your local community pool.
Yvonne Probert – Chair Matthew Grant – Treasurer
On behalf of the Birtley Community Aquatic Centre Trustee Board
Get in touch with Birtley Community Pool
Address
Birtley Community Pool, Durham Rd, Birtley,
Chester-le-Street, DH3 2PA
