CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 14years old!
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ALMOST one third of public sports centres are facing the axe amid plans to cut funding for the venues by £2 million.
Council-owned swimming pools, golf clubs and sports centres are under threat as the city moves to slash its annual grant to Edinburgh Leisure from £9.6m to £7.5m over the next three years.
The unprecedented cull could see as many as eight sports facilities close within the Capital.
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It's a pity if facilities are to close, but does Edinburgh really need so many golf courses? Bowling greens slightly different issue: help to keep older folk active. Maybe though there's an over supply there too.
I'd have thought that a large part of the point of being a living human is to be able to engage in physical and intellectual leisure.
Our masters have their leisure pursuits;
How about we re-adjust the Council Tax bands in instead of closing our places of recreation?
IWRATS
If you are going to post links to pictures of Dave Cameron in a wetsuit, can you at least provide a warning?
;)
Simple really - we are spending so much on obesity and diabetes treatments that we cannot possibly, as a society, afford decent sports facilities.
Joined up government - dontcha love it?
Alternative use for CKGC -
http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=13490#post-169642
These so called public sports centres far more costly than the private ones. Edinburgh leisure gym costs 3 times as much as pure gym. The only people who pay a fare price are council’s workers and Scottish government works.
Even if someone is unemployed they have to pay the full £55 a month or what ever it currently is and at the time I complained about the high costs around 2006 it cost the not much less than greens even though the door fee was only 1/3 of the income. Making a pro rate charge in comparison be £120 a month.
Although I like centres tend to think the government should use tax payers money for the benefit of the public lower income people who may not be able to afford a commercial gym, also lower income groups may get greater health gains.
Instead what happens or did happen is the government use the gym as an employment benefit and also to subsidize middle class hobbies like golf and tennis. nothing wrong with either but don’t think it’s a correct use of limited resources as the edinburgh lesuire had no money left to allow low income or even unemployed any discount after had provided all the vanity projects and given directors of scottish government and head of the council a discount.
In my view the council service should increase access to faculties not subsidise the better of and self interest of administrators of the government be it local or national.
At the time I complained was the most expensive council gym in Scotland for gym membership. The person that ran it seemed more focused on winning awards glamerous things (was an ex sports man ) than providing useful service to increase the health of the public.
Like so many governments services their for interests groups, with the commercial sector providing the service privately that the public had already paid for out there 13 million in council tax if memory services me correctly.
Council tax is not means tested or income related it based on the 1992 value of an asset someone may not even own.
Tend to think using a "flat tax" (Its not really a flat tax, but not directly income related either, council tax is just mess from Legacy and polical reasons) to pay for luxaries or discounts so that the likes of the Chauffer driven head of the scottish government can get a discount is not a good use of resources.
The people who would have the most benefit from edinburgh lesuire the lower social economic groups are socially exculded by the high prices. Paying far more than the people who decide the prices.
There are private-sector alternatives to many of the council facilities, e.g. gyms, gold courses, boolin' greens. Then there are things that there are no real alternatives in the private sector like swimming pools.
I think council should look long and hard at where they should and shouldn't try to provide facilities to citizens. As Ed1 points out, they aren't providing gyms at some sort of obvious discount, and Edinburgh appears to be overflowing with gyms, so should they be bothering to provide gyms at all? If the council closed all its golf courses, would those who currently use them face a big increase in fees to play on any of the many private courses*? Are council boolin' clubs subsidised compared to private ones? My Nana was a keen bowler all her life and when they shut the public green at the end of her street (which she had to pay membership fees for) she went to the next-nearest - private - club instead and carried on playing and carried on paying the same sort of fees.
Sports facilities like pools are expensive to build and run and probably won't ever turn a profit so the private sector isn't that interested. Others, like gyms, where you rent some floor space and cram it full of electric machines that are probably on lease anyway, aren't. That's where I think the council should step in to ensure access to sport and recreation.
Silly question, the answer to which I'm sure is "politics", but why are the council consulting on big capital investment at Hunters Hall if they can't afford to keep the existing revenue budgets safe?
(* answer, I don't know, but I also know there's quite a few of the smaller private clubs struggling just now due to dwindling memberships and also a few have closed, Swanston I think is one)
@Charlthepar
It was that or Stephen Hester riding to hounds;
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/01/28/article-2092914-117C0BC5000005DC-122_308x590.jpg
We live in easy walking distance to dalry swim centre, but we visit about once a year. It's cold. awkward and rarely configured for family swimming.
Last sunday, during the 'fun swim' 1/3 of it was still configured for lanes, AND there were still elderly folk insisting on swimming laps in the 2/3rds that was non-laned space. which meant that the three other parents and me with babies/toddlers trying to stay in the shallow end, where constantly bumping and splashing each other despite our best efforts.
In theory this 'fun swim' was free for primary school kids to make up for loss of waterworld. There were three there.
There is of course a private pool at fountainpark.
I'll be very surprised if dalry's not on the closure plan.
This may be linked to propensity to vote, which rises with age. Propensity to use cooncil leisure facilities, I'd imagine, may well fall with age.
"why are the council consulting on big capital investment at Hunters Hall"
"Once again it highlights that there are 'two sorts of money'..."
of course, if edinburgh leisure could actually come up with a website that meant you could actually find out when activities were happening, they might be astounded by the flow of people through their doors.
Edin Leisure try to make the stats for use of their pools look better than they actually are. You actually can't simply pay to visit the gym - you have to pay for a swimming ticket with a gym surcharge bundled on top (certainly at my local, may differ elsewhere). The monthly membership prices follow the same principle.
Which makes visiting an EL gym a very expensive proposition, since I'm not really a swimmer.
This makes my £16.99 Pure Gym membership with its 24 hour access a complete no-brainer.
E.L. have failed to respond to the trend for cheaper gyms, and (as SRD points out) useful websites and mobile apps to book classes etc. I don't see them surviving in current form.
Have to say though, EL run great coaching and courses in sports activities for young folk. Really good facilities in the main, too.
Presumably gyms etc. are used to subsidise less profitable aspects of the service? Soft play also has a similar role I presume. Dunno for sure but seems possible. Maybe instead they should focus on doing what they do well, and doing it better? But then would that lead to even greater losses?
Yeah the web site could be better: main issue seems to be not updating it frequently enough. I always have to phone up to find out if stuff is scheduled, happening, booked up, etc.
@crowriver if you know what is on/what is likely to be on you can usually figure it out, but if you're trying to find eg antenatal swimming it's impossible.
also have very bad habit of saying 'in school holidays' and assuming that everyone knows the school holidays schedule (which we certainly didn't before we had kids).
i could go on and on....
drives me mad.
signed my daughter up for 'swimming camp' last year at the commie pool. they only swam once a day, and that not even every day.
I assume the reason that Warrender is "out of bounds" for the chop is that it's the home of the Warrender Club and therefore has an assured future because of that (perhaps assured funding from outside the council too?).
I used to frequent the slow lane at Warrender. The pool was small and wide enough for 4 widths of lanes. the usual layout in public hours was 1 fast, for the speed merchants doing their crawl training / showing off, 1 slow and 2 combined into a free-for-all area of people going up and down and side-to-side and nowhere at all.
It worked, but only if you cracked the unwritten cryptic timetable of when the pool was quiet enough to make getting a 40 minute stretch without being elbow to toes with other swimmers possible.
Agree with SRD that the current system of publishing for-print PDFs on the site to show what's on, on a site-by-site basis, is unsustainably terrible. At little extra cost, (or even a saving!) a decent website that allows you to filter what events and sites you want to look at, at a glance, could encourage many more users to use the facilities and make them more profitable or at the least stem the current losses.
The membership schemes are so unattractive, I'm surprised anyone apart from those who swim 4 or 5 times a week for sport purposes would take one out.
For those of us who live in Rural West Edinburgh it is better to use West Lothian Council's sports organisation Excite which has better facilities & is cheaper & Ed Leisure have never realised that. Therefore people go to Linlithgow or Broxburn & EL close or cut the hours of Queensferry & Kirkliston facilities despite the numbers of folk moving into these areas.
EL pulled out of Port Edgar in April leaving water sports tuition to one company & marina management to another so they now have a rental income from PE - obviously not enough though!
Infant-swimbling classes are sort of shown if you search for them but the info given is different to the info available to people on the end of the phone when you give up and ring.
This might be the time to refer to the City of Invernessandthereabouts Council's alleged activity access package, which apparently costs my sister-in-law about twenty quid a month for ANY activity for ANY of her three childs, husband or self, as opposed to Edinburgh's "upwards of thirty quid just for one person's swimming access" technique.
I have a card that I buy 10 (I think) swimming sessions on for less than the cost of 10 individual sessions. If you see what I mean. But then I'm one of those annoying people who show off by doing crawl in the fast lane (as opposed to swimming two lengths, talking for 10 minutes, then swimming another two lengths).
I don't have any problems getting information from Edinburgh Leisure's website (but then all I'm looking for is "Public Swimming With Lanes". And the temperature in Dalry suits me nicely. (The first time I went swimming with my neices and nephew I nearly froze because I was just standing around. They had to let me go and swim a couple of lengths now and then to warm up).
The last time I went with them (& my sister, in the town they live in) the pool was full of families and children. No lanes. I wonder if there's a bit of a cycle going on at Dalry. I've been there on a Saturday and expected the lanes to be taken out, but they were not. So I keep swimming in them. So people like the SRDs have less space, so they don't go swimming. So the pool people see that "there's no demand" for a kid's session, while if their staff actually took the lanes out, then the annoying front crawl people would go away and the kids could have the whole shallow end.
I did look at membership of the Commie Pool about a year ago come to think of it. It was astonishingly expensive for someone looking to add swimming to cross-training.
A lot of non means tested discounting, government employees, but also over 55 and if you have the right GP another discount. (of course to have the right GP may be related to living in better area).
I suppose like the bus pass baby boomers a bigger group politically more likely to vote. The age discrimination is possibly unfair as can get well of retired teachers on 25k getting free membership at Edinburgh leisure or get lawyers etc that can afford their own membership. I used to like going to the tennis centre gym, seemed a lot of reasonably of people that did not pay. Of course this is not a representative sample but did feel a big of mug paying full price when people turned up in 40k Audis pay nothing or next nothing.
Although it would seem reasonable to have subsidies children’s activities, but much like the tram where get lawyers on large income stepping on at shandwick place using a free ride card for 60 years old, yet 5 year olds are expected to pay irrespective of income government discount on political rather than need or income basis so am guessing children actives are still chargeable.
Excite gym seem better prices and also more what you would expect council to be providing an affordable service nothing glamorous still a tad more pricey than could hope for.
The best state subsidized gym I found was Herriot Watt cheap prices. As the university has relationships with community policy appears a nice “socialist utopia” for the public,. However tend to remember when at university for students a lot of falseness, universities focus on problems people don’t have, frivolous concerns, while will aggressively discriminate and cancel funding if central government etc gives the “right nod or wink” or whatever the “agent” of the central governments “whim” decides, irrespective of the law, university breach equality act if central government agent chooses (not just meaning the "Stasi" that hang around universities), far from the utopia or place of merit they present more a branch of the “bad side" (to be silly), of the state, in my time in the 90s, the government had a complete monopoly on under graduate funding crowed out the charity etc private borrowing, so if you got targeted by the state to have funding cut, which may be correlated with the more “free thinking” type , then was very little source of funding. A kind of in built adverse selection at university the states approval, is not an intellectual endorsement.
I do enjoy going down to the Watt using the faculties for almost nothing cycling around the place the gym the cafes etc although think it may be very much a business these days with non EU fees.
I am slightly wary of edinburgh lesuire type spending, as tends to be everyone that pays for them with a few narrow interests groups benefiting, like edinburgh lesure a tax on the worse of to pay for the benefit of better of or the trams a tax on everyone to pay for some narrow interests groups with cushy job at transport edinburgh or to pay contractors etc.
Unlike say cycling infrasture that is "non discriminatory" the (to be silly, although is something in may be) government have not figured out a way yet to charge poorer/ diverse/disabled or people that they disagree with, more to use the cycle paths yet as they may do with other services.
Regarding the use of pools by different customer bases it has always seemed a bit mental that Edinburgh Leisure try to please everybody at each pool. Given that when I go to Dalry pool (usually when the Commie is shut for an event) I find it both excessively hot and too full of non/slow swimmers for a satisfying session it seems obvious neither SRD not myself will be happy with our respective experiences! Nor should they try to please us both - I reckon aiming a couple of pools at "serious" swimmers (Commie and Ainslie Park in my view) and leaving the rest for the "leisure" market would make a lot of sense. Maybe then they wouldn't need to divide the Commie's 50m pool in half for the entire weekend.
As for the memberships I find them excellent but then I do swim 5/6 days a week. Compared to provision in other towns I've lived in Edinburgh Leisure is wonderful.
Their website does suck, though it can generally be tortured to reveal the information you need.
-David (show-off crawl-in-fast-lane speed merchant...:))
@fimm Ah, the chat-merchants! They are most irritating. Consequently, the best bit about the commie refurb for me was the introduction of uniform 2m depth. So it's swim or drown/freeze while clinging onto the side. Result: no more chatting! Splendid...
I usually go to Drum Brae when one of the swim clubs has half of it. This means the main part is very sparsely populated as no one wants to be using a pool with a large group of fast lane show offs ;)
Result is I often had the pool to myself once the club got out.
But it is very expensive at 6 or 7 quid a shot.
Carrick Knowe golf course has become noticeably quieter over the last few years. I think at one point it was the busiest public course in Europe, although I may have imagined reading that.
A few months ago I spotted a group of men in suits walking round the edge of the course with clipboards and tape measures. I wondered at the time what they were up to - developers scoping out the land? Selling off a fairly large bit of fairly prime land would help the cooncil coffers.
6 or 7 quid for the pool to yourself I would if guaranteed. I paid 30 quid for ten coached swim lessons for about two years and this would often allow me a lane to myself (in the school pool at Balerno, but the lessons are open to all. Four lanes and once the really fast lads gave up I used to slowly slog up and down their lane. Sometimes following the teacher's programme, sometimes if lane partner was there who just liked to swim front crawl for an hour that is what we did, three sets of forty. Was good fun. I need decent ear plugs though so if anyone has recommendations?
All pools need to cater for as many punters as they can, they cost more than they bring in and are heavily subsidised. So lanes go up early morning, lunch time and tea time and fun can occur outwith, often with very large floats.
Years back you struggled to swim in edinburgh on a Sunday but Midlothian pools were open.
Infirmary St was my fave, then Warrender, then Glenogle. Dalry I was never so keen on as the first three your cubicle was right at the pool but Dalry you could be upstairs. Commie too long, has a current and the locker room attendant liked to watch you showering. Also too busy. Apparently the new pool in craigroyston high school is great.
Any recommendations for ear plugs, I cannot get water in my ears. No way. The wee ones that look like blu tack last for a bout half a swim.
Edin leisure, I find pretty cheap. We use warrender for sons lessons, and meadows tennis for Saturday tennis lessons. IIRC the tennis is ludicrously cheap, works out about £3 per lesson.
Also if we want to play tennis with son, the cost is calculated on child's rate - ie about £4.50 for a court (think a lot of that comes from Aegon grassroots sponsorship though).
Edin leisures problem is their opaque charge structure as detailed in earlier posts,but my experience is it is pretty good all round.
Shame they are skint, but its been that way for years unfortunately, look at the water world debacle.
Does Alex Harkins still do the tennis coaching at the Meadows? Great guy and great coach.
Yes, Alex is still there. Dedicated guy.
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