Gov Staying Silent Over School Pool

• We have been in contact with the DESC spokersperson who has informed us that Gef’s email have now been located in a spam folder.

Last month the DESC unveiled plans for a new Castle Rushen High School, which included a swimming pool, but it still isn’t clear if that was always the case.

Before that announcement, the gov had given little public indication that there would be a pool included, even as it proposed asking Tynwald to close the south’s only swimming pool.

While news of the pool was welcome to many, it left that one key issue in the air, if the pool had always been part of the plan, why didn’t the minister say so when the department proposed closing the southern pool by cutting its funding and if it wasn’t in the plans, was it only added because of the pressure of local residents and MHKs?

The statement confirming a pool was in the plans was issued on Thursday January 25. The plan included a secondary school and sports hub, complete with six lane swimming pool and changing facilities.

Minister Julie Edge was quoted as saying: ‘I have been developing this strategic vision for some time, and I am delighted to finally share it with the public. It will now inform the design stage and subsequent next steps.

‘I know how important this development is and it is our intention to move at pace to complete this much needed educational and community infrastructure for the south.’

We emailed a DESC spokesperson and the minister half an hour after receiving that email to seek clarification over why it hadn’t announced the plans when it determined it wanted to see the southern pool close and why the new plans at least appeared to be different to the ones posted by the minister on Facebook, which were also included in another email earlier that month which only showed a ‘sports block’ (see below).

(As stated above, the DESC has now said our emails fell into a spam folder so were not seen until after this piece was published).

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While it may be that the gov intended this sports block to include a pool and it just hadn’t been clear, this doesn’t tally with a statement issued by the Southern Swimming Pool board on Tuesday January 23, before the gov published its masterplan for the school.

In that statement, the board said: ‘Following publication of the CRHS Masterplan in November 2023, the Board obtained written confirmation from DESC that no decision had been made over a replacement pool.

‘Indeed, in the meeting on 10 January 2024, Minister Edge confirmed that the pool was not in the CRHS Masterplan as funding was unavailable. She explained that the plan was a vision which had the potential to contain a pool.’

It also went on to ‘welcome’ Ms Edge’s comments on Manx Radio’s Mannin Line on Monday January 22, on which she said the plan did include a six lane pool.

While this achieved the result many in the south wanted, the statements still don’t align, with the board’s statement clearly saying it was told by Ms Edge that there was no money for a pool.

Since then, Gef has seen the masterplan that showed the Manx Development Corporation had drafted plans in November 2022 which included a pool. It also included a proposal to build a new primary school as part of the plans in order to release the existing Victoria Road school for development.

That masterplan Ms Edge told Keys, also on a January 23, was the same that members had seen a year before. She said: ‘I think it’s really important we move forward, we have announced that there is a six lane swimming pool, all honourable members had the master plan over a year ago and certainly there’s a six line swimming pool within that sports complex for Castle Rushen High School.’

However, this still does not tally with the version of events from the swimming pool board, or why the department didn’t announce this when it recommended cutting funding and closing the pool.

Gef again contacted the DESC spokesperson and Ms Edge on January 31 to seek this clarification as to whether the pool has always been in its plans and if not, when it was taken out and when it was added back in.

(As stated above, the DESC has now said our emails fell into a spam folder so were not seen until after this piece was published).