How Water Wellbeing is transforming communities across the country

Swim England is celebrating a significant milestone as more than 200 pools across the country have now been accredited with the national governing body’s Water Wellbeing standard.

A total of 201 sites have achieved the accreditation, developed with the aim of transforming existing community swimming pool assets into places for health, wellbeing and rehabilitation, with more in the process of working towards it.

Water Wellbeing can be implemented by any pool in England and helps to improve outcomes for people with long-term health conditions.

The 201 sites have resulted in more than 20,000 hours of increased community capacity with opportunities to participate in activities including adult learn to swim, quiet swims, dementia friendly swimming, Good Boost rehabilitation and mental health peer support swim groups.

Tees Active, a leisure provider with four pools in the north east were the latest to achieve accreditation, with all their sites being deemed as being accessible, inclusive and welcoming to people with long term health conditions or impairments.

The process took Tees Active around six months to complete, with one of the steps taken to make the physical environment at their facilities more accessible with improved accessibility information on their website and new signage at each facility.

Leon Jones, Tees Active’s managing director, said: “This important national accreditation is testament to our ongoing commitment to make leisure activities more accessible across the borough.”

Tees Active is the latest in host of single and multi-site operators to have undertaken the significant commitment to achieve the accreditation across England, including Everyone Active, one of the country’s largest pool operators.

This has resulted in better health wellbeing offers on a huge scale and leading to the operator winning Gold and Silver in the health impact category at the Swim England National Awards over the last two years.

Anjilee Lane, Everyone Active’s strategic lead for aquatics, said: “Everyone Active continues to put health and wellbeing at the forefront of our company values. The Swim England Water Wellbeing accreditation has enhanced our understanding of the requirements needed to ensure we are inclusive and accessible to people of all ages and abilities in both our facilities and programming.

“The support and guidance from Swim England have influenced our priorities both nationally and locally, from increased signage to training and educating our colleagues, ensuring we are delivering to the highest standards of aquatic activity.

Participants feel comfortable

“Through our ongoing partnership with Swim England, we have been able to advance our health and wellbeing goals while adopting an innovative approach to improving swimming opportunities and provisions nationwide.  We are thrilled that all our swimming facilities have been awarded the Water Wellbeing accreditation.”

Since breaking through the 200-site landmark, a number of other operators have committed to the accreditation with Swim England, not only with the intention to improve the physical facility environment but also to improve the range of delivery options available to the public.

The latest offering, focused on supporting positive mental health through aquatics, is the Swim Together programme, delivered by Mental Health Swims.

The programme takes a peer support approach to helping people take those first few tentative steps into swimming, often navigating the daunting prospect of stepping into the unknown for the first time.

Swim Together was launched in Leamington Spa in 2023, in partnership with Leamington Primary Care Network, Everyone Active and Mental Health Swims, with initial funding by Swim England.

Participants benefited in different ways, joining the sessions to improve physical and mental health, but also to connect with others with one participant describing sessions as ‘Enjoyable, relaxing swims with no pressure, a sociable experience.’

Rachel Ashe, managing director at Mental Health Swims, explains: “Swim Together is about creating safe and welcoming spaces for people experiencing mental health issues and our aim is to make leisure centres feel like familiar, friendly places within the local community for those who may not feel confident enough to visit the pool alone.

“Our swim hosts are trained to facilitate these peer support sessions and ensure that participants feel comfortable from the initial meeting outside the leisure centre to the post-swim chat in the café.”

A similar offer, provided by social enterprise Good Boost, provides personalised therapeutic aquatic exercise programmes, designed by artificial intelligence through waterproof tablet PCs on poolside across England, Scotland and Wales, turning leisure venues into health and wellness hubs.

Good Boost’s programmes are designed to help people with joint conditions and other long-term health conditions get back to exercise after injury or prepare for surgery, with impressive results demonstrated so far.

Ben Wilkins, CEO of Good Boost, said: “This year Good Boost published a mixed method research paper on our joint work with Kings College NHS Hospital Trust, highlighting the positive impact on co-delivered of aquatic wellbeing programmes in collaboration with the NHS.

Enthusiasm and effort

“We are due to publish a large quantitative study in early 2025 highlighting the measurable health impact of Good Boost. Additionally, it’s been great to have the results from the ‘MSK Hubs’ programme, that highlighted that 44% of participants reported a meaningful clinical improvement in their condition and a social value created of £5.30 for every £1 invested through 4Globals social value calculator. This combined research has further highlighted the measurable impact of Good Boost in pools and leisure spaces throughout the UK.”

Good Boost also recently celebrated achieving ORCHA medical-app accreditation and has been NHS digital certified, ensuring that digital products meet the highest standards needed in order to be safe and reliable.

Implementing such offers in 2025 and beyond will also include the likes of Serco Leisure, who have committed to the accreditation process across all their venues.

Serco Leisure’s national active wellbeing manager Sarah Berne said: “Ensuring all our pool sites are Water Wellbeing Accredited is incredibly important to Serco Leisure and is embedded as a key action within our new Active Wellbeing Strategy.

“We want our spaces to be as accessible and welcoming as possible, ensuring all people of different ages and abilities feel comfortable in our centres in order for them to enjoy the amazing health and wellbeing benefits of being active in the water.

“The process with Swim England has been relatively straight forward and contains simple steps. Carrying out the environmental assessments has been a real eye opener with regards to the barriers some people may face and has definitely got us thinking in new ways.

“For example, something as simple as having clear signage not just to find the pool but more so upon exiting and way finding back to the changing rooms. Serco Centre managers have also attended the environmental assessments and have enjoyed being brought on this journey together.”

Andrew Power, water wellbeing specialist at Swim England, said: “Newly accredited sites are springing up across the country as a result of the enthusiasm and effort of the sector to support local people to improve their health and wellbeing.

“With this change in the quality and quantity of the offering, new healthcare partnerships are being created, taking full advantage of the opportunities being developed by forward thinking leisure operators. We hope to see hundreds more facilities following this framework for improvement in 2025 and beyond.”

The Water Wellbeing accreditation scheme is open to any pool and offers a range of resources, training and support to help staff better understand the customer experience, as well as personalise the aquatic offer to suit the needs of those with long-term health conditions.

For more information on Water Wellbeing or other aspects of Swim England’s health and wellbeing work, visit www.swimming.org/swimengland/health-and-wellbeing/ or get in touch at [email protected].