Local Swimmers Angered With Council Pool Agreement

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There are concerns from local parents and swim coaches that children who are coached at Sawtell Swimming Pool will be disadvantaged during the refurbishments by not being able to transfer their training to the Coffs Harbour Memorial Pool. An exclusive deal done by Coffs Harbour City Council has even had swimmers as young as 12 years old allegedly asked to leave the facility after management believed they were being 'coached' by their grandparent who was supervising them.

We have asked to speak to Mayor Paul Amos about the situation.

Meanwhile, when asked about the issues, Coffs Harbour City Council provided this statement:

When Council took over management of the pools we went to a competitive process to secure businesses wishing to operate the squads. During this process it was made quite explicit that the contracts would be for exclusive rights at each pool and that the Sawtell and Woolgoolga Pools would be closing for the redevelopments at some point during the contract period. Each of the swimming squad contractors are well aware of this and entered the contracts well informed and with eyes wide open.

We were approached by the Sawtell contract holder to see if they could take space at Coffs Harbour, despite acknowledging that exclusive rights existed. Council attempted to broker a deal that would enable the Sawtell squads to operate from Coffs Harbour but we were unsuccessful in getting concurrence or agreement from all parties. As such, we are bound by the existing contracts which are in place until December 2022. The Coffs contract has a further 12 month option available at December 2022.

The Coffs contractor is quite happy to have the Sawtell children swim with his squads so they do not miss out on their training.

Here Moffee as he shares some of the correspondence from locals:

2 May 2022




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