Community / Pool petition handed into SRT as contact between trusts expected
SHETLAND Charitable Trust (SCT) is expected to speak soon to Shetland Recreational Trust (SRT) about its funding situation as the closure of the Scalloway swimming pool draws nearer.
But SRT chairman David Thomson said he feels it is “getting to the point where it needs a bigger conversation” beyond just the two trusts.
He was speaking after receiving a petition – containing more than 4,200 signatures – from the Save Scalloway Pool campaign group, who met for a handover outside the Clickimin on Monday evening prior to an SRT board meeting.
Standing outside, Thomson answered questions from the group – who are keen to see the charitable trust give SRT extra funding to keep the pool open for at least another year and give time to “find a way forward”.
SCT, which provides core funding to SRT, met last week and discussed the situation in private.
After the meeting on Thursday a spokesperson for the charitable trust said there was no clear way forward.
But Thomson said on Monday that he has been advised SCT would be getting in touch soon to discuss the matter further.
For now, the situation remains the same – that the SRT has decided it needs to close a facility to keep the charity financially sustainable.
Speaking to campaigners, who last week submitted a copy of the petition to the SCT, Thomson warned that the SRT as a whole could “break” otherwise.
“I think people are beginning to realise, that this isn’t just an SRT conversation,” Thomson said when speaking inside to the media after.
“We’re just one bit of a bigger picture that involves multiple aspects of Shetland’s community. And making this a bigger discussion on what’s sustainable for Shetland as a whole, and if the community decides that it’s this, how is that provided?”
“I can only take responsibility for one bit of that, but if there’s a bigger discussion perhaps through something like the Shetland Partnership, then you’ve got the ability to go ‘right, what does Shetland actually want’, as opposed to what is the SRT legally responsible for.”
He added that it was the legal duty of a trustee in a charity to ensure that organisation is financially sustainable.
Thomson also said he would not be surprised if SRT represents an “early example” of systemic challenges in Shetland.
“That wider conversation, having a discussion about what does all of Shetland think is a sustainable model, is beginning to sound quite important.”
The SRT runs eight leisure facilities, from Unst to Sandwick, and is a key beneficiary of funding from SCT.
It has a funding package in place through to 2030 but the recreational trust has warned that the status quo would see it become insolvent by that point.
As to a request from campaigners to have the pool stay open for at least one more year, Thomson suggested doing so could threaten the efforts already made by the SRT in recent years to make its operating model more sustainable.
“The SRT has made a decision – because we’re a very large organisation, we have staff, we have contractual commitments, and these aren’t easy to just turn on and off,” he said.
The SRT chair pointed to a staffing challenge which he said stems back to the Covid pandemic, adding that since then “we’ve probably existed on the back of staff goodwill”.
“As we’ve come out of Covid, much of the world has gone back to normal – well SRT is still basically asking its staff to carry the organisation on its back,” Thomson said.
“As the financial challenges got more and more difficult, our reaction to that has not allowed us to be able to meet that staffing requirement, max that capacity that we would need to be able to run the service we would want to run.
“If we now start unpicking the situation that we’ve chosen to go down, we’re going to have to solve an ever bigger problem.”
He said with no prospect of more funding, “we have to be very clear that we could spend a year getting to the same answer, and then we’re a year further down the line and then the financial consequences of that are even harder”.
“So while we would be always open to discuss this, we can’t do this at the cost of the just making things worse.”
In terms of the future, Thomson suggested the SRT would be interested in letting groups like Scalloway Community Council have input on potential uses which may arise after the building closes.
“We’re not going to jump and just make a decision on that ourselves,” he said, adding that “we’re not going to let it it go to the first person who walks through the door”.
He also said there tends to be little difference between the heating options at its leisure centres – Scalloway uses biomass, but some of the SRT’s centres also use oil, while district heating is utilised at the Clickimin.
“It’s not like there’s one that’s just magically half the price of the others,” Thomson said.
“Fundamentally we have large buildings using huge amounts of heat and there is no cheap way to do that.”
He added that biomass is a “really good heat source” and highlighted they are linked to school heating systems in some cases.
It was also highlighted by campaigners outside that users of the pool are yet to be contacted about future arrangements once Scalloway closes at the end of March, with one mother saying they were left in the dark about their children’s future swimming lessons.
Thomson, however, reiterated that the SRT does plan to contact users.
There were also suggestions from campaigners that usage figures for Scalloway included in a letter from Thomson to the village’s community council did not tell the full picture, but he said that was the data trustees have.
There was also concern shown about the public transport links for people in the Scalloway area accessing the Clickimin pool, from the time of a round-trip to people with mobility problems trying to get over from Bolts.
An FAQs section on the decision to close Scalloway pool can be found on the SRT website.
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