These libraries and leisure centres faced disaster as councils cut services. Then volunteers stepped in

It’s a Tuesday afternoon at Elswick Community Pool and Gym and Susan has déjà vu.

Her seven-year-old grandsons Joshua and Zack are in a lesson. Their mum Laura – also waiting in the café – learned to swim here in the 1990s.

“It’s a lovely pool,” says Susan. “It’s the first place I think of when I think of swimming. All three of my kids learned here. Now the twins are too.”

Every week, nearly 1,000 children (and around 80 adults) take lessons at the pool. When the Big Issue visits, it’s buzzing with children: splashing around in the shallow end on inflatable noodles, treading water under an instructor’s watchful eye, devouring post-swim chips in the café.

“A lot of parents depend on it,” says Daniel Leghorn, a dad who is waiting for his eight-year-old (“eight, going on 30”) daughter’s lesson to finish. Like Laura, he also learned to swim here when he was a child. “If the pool had shut – well, there are some other pools, but they’re a way away. If this went, there would be a lot of kids left with nothing.”

But for several years this facility stood empty, a victim of Newcastle City Council budget cuts.  

“In 2015, the council decided that they didn’t have the funds to run any of the leisure facilities, so they outsourced them,” said Phil Jameson, centre manager. “Elswick wasn’t chosen. The council had no plan to bring it in. There was uproar.”

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Britain’s cash-strapped local authorities have endured a torrid 15 years. During the 2010s, English councils’ overall core funding per person fell by an average 26% in real terms. In the most deprived tenth of councils, the drop was 35%.

Local authorities responded by prioritising statutory services like social care. Funding for everything else – from leisure centres to libraries, youth programmes to arts initiatives – has declined precipitously. In the North East alone, 62 pools have permanently shut since 2010.

But Elswick, Jameson explains, really needs this facility: “A lot of local people have really bad health outcomes.” Some 45.4% of children in the local area live in poverty. According to the Index of Multiple Deprivation, Elswick is the 296th most deprived area in England, out of 32,844 localities. Life expectancy trails the rest of the country by three years.

“It means a lot to a lot of local people,” Jameson said.  “So, a group of locals took a leap of faith.”

A group formed a charitable trust to take over management of the pool, launching a crowdfunder and drawing up a business plan. Eventually the council agreed to hand it over as a community asset transfer starting from September 2019. The non-profit pool – funded through admission fees – is a “a source of immense pride”. It runs, among other things, breakfast clubs for local children, swimming sessions for different religious groups, and low-cost exercise classes for seniors. There are 15 permanent volunteers and a small permanent staff

“Prices are the lowest in the city, and we’ve deliberately kept them as low as we can, so everyone can afford to come and swim,” Jameson says. “It’s very community focused.”

Community asset transfers have become increasingly common in the UK, as locals rally together to save vital services from austerity’s swingeing cuts.

Volunteers have taken over more than 500 at-risk libraries over the past decade and a half. Jesmond Library, also in Newcastle, is part of this tally. In 2012, the Newcastle City Council agreed to a brutal £100m cuts package as part of the national government’s austerity programme. Ten council-run libraries would close, the council said: a decision described by locals as “shameful” and “unforgivable”.

At a packed public meeting held to discuss the proposals, 93 attendees opposed the closure of Jesmond Library, while just three supported it.

A group – Friends of Jesmond Library – was formed to oppose the cuts.

“Right from the start, [the group] had two purposes,” said Chris Clarke, library trustee. “The first purpose was to try to persuade the council to keep the library open. But the second purpose was that if the council went ahead with the closure anyway, which they did, then a social company should be formed to take over the library instead.”

Volunteers had done it before, Clarke explained – 30 years prior, the council had closed the local Jesmond swimming pool.

“We reopened the pool as a local enterprise and residents have been running it for 30 years,” he added. “A lot of local people had confidence if we could run the swimming pool we could run the library.”

Jesmond was successfully reopened by volunteers in September 2013. A dedicated roster of 100 volunteers oversees more than 400 events annually, from English classes for asylum seekers to infant play groups. Financed by event fees, coffee sales, and about 200 local voluntary subscriptions, the library has tallied over 17,000 member visits and has issued approximately 10,000 books.

It takes a village, says Clarke, to deliver this effort.

“Just because you’re speaking to one volunteer, don’t get the impression it’s something a small number of people do,” he added. “We have a very large number of volunteers. And if you totted up all the volunteers involved in community libraries and leisure centres all over the region, that’s a huge number of people.”

Volunteers are justly proud of the work that they have done. But they can’t do everything. Nearly 800 council-run libraries closed in the decade from 2010 – around a fifth of the UK’s libraries.

“I have some sympathy with local authorities,” said Clarke. “Somebody gives you the choice between looking after an old lady who’s got no support, or you know, looking after a public building. You might well try and prioritise accordingly. But important services do suffer.”

Money can be a struggle for volunteer-run facilities. At nearby Fawdon Library – taken over by the community in 2014 – “funding is a constant challenge,“ says Pat Turns, Chairperson. “We rent our library room, but we need internet and telephone access, PCs, printer/inks, software, books, stationery. The list goes on,” she said.

“We have been regularly supported by our local ward committee, but their pot reduces year on year – we could not remain open without grants.”

Back at the Elswick pool, Daniel Leghorn agrees. He works in adult social care for a nearby council, so knows first-hand the funding pressures local authorities are under.

“The volunteers are amazing, but it shouldn’t depend on volunteers. This is an essential service,” he said.

“Cuts that close facilities like this separate the rich from the poor. Parents with money can afford to take their kids swimming. Parents without money can’t. I had football, boxing, swimming. A lot of kids these days just have nothing, if their parents can’t afford it.”

Newcastle City Council has been contacted for comment.

As the swimming lesson wraps up, the kids in the pool swap places with another big group waiting by the water’s edge. “Can we stay until after and go back in?” one child asks his mum. “Next week,” she replies.

Without the Elswick pool, thousands of local children wouldn’t get the chance to swim at all, says Jameson.

“When you step back and look at it, what’s been done, it feels like you’re part of something really special,” he says. “Really very special.”

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