REFURB INFORMATION

1. Pool Refurbishment Project 

This time last year, we were just starting a major fundraising drive and raised over an amazing £50,000 through our Crowdfunder initiative. This was a great village effort with the support of 320 members of the community. The success of the Crowdfunder rang bells at Sport England, prompting them to contact us directly to see what further support we might need - yes, we were headhunted as a success story :)  

They were interested in our project and aware that rising building costs were putting various sports projects at risk. They asked if we would like their support to help us get our project over the finish line and we obviously replied with a resounding "Yes please!"

In the Autumn, Sport England paid for surveys of the plant room, pool structure and surround to help ensure that our funds are put to best use. They have given us a further £20K (in addition to the £10K they gave us as part of the Crowdfunder) to support us through the development stage of the project. As a result of the surveys, the Trustees are following the
recommended advice to carry out additional engineering investigations. Through Sport England’s support, we will be commissioning two engineering consultancy firms to carry out
this additional work. 

The engineers are particularly interested in two areas: 

i) They have requested a CCTV survey of the existing drainage system and for us to check some details with Southern Water. 

ii) We have been losing some water from the pool for a while and the engineers want to investigate this leakage by organising extra site investigation by trial pits and boreholes. We believe that the leakage is from the existing pipework, all of which is going to be replaced during the refurbishment, but we agree that additional investigation will minimise the risk of unexpected problems going forward. 

Understandably, if Sport England are to fund us further, they need to be sure that our project is feasible. Although they haven't stated that they will help us with a further infrastructure grant, they have implied that they might, and have supported similar facilities in this way. This additional work has meant a delay in the project, so we still don't t have a final specification to go out to tender. This leaves us unsure of our final budget requirement, but we anticipate that this will be in the order of £300,000 to £350,000. Whilst this is significantly more than initially thought, in part due to inflationary costs of building work, the Trustees are confident that we will obtain funding. We now have £140,000 available in the bank for the project and are continuing to look at other infrastructure grant options as we move forward.
The pool will be open as normal this season and we hope to be able to commence building work once we close in September, ready for next season.