At yesterday evening’s Budget Council meeting, the Medway Conservatives (with full support from our Members of Parliament) moved an amendment which would have kept free swimming for our under 16s and over 60s. Swimming is vital to the health of our nation, 19.7% of Medway’s adults swum last year, lower than the national average, and only 14.7% of children swum, significantly lower than the national average of 26%.
Our amendment would have seen £100,000 removed from Councillor Maple’s PR department, and removal of funds from the regeneration team, which previously led on the now defunct HIF project. This would have kept free swimming, and within the financial envelope presented by the administration. At a recorded vote, all Medway Labour and Co-Operative Councillors voted against, demonstrating their political priorities are more focused on public relations than free swimming.
Nationally, the Conservative Government are committed to swimming, through the Swimming Pool Support Fund. That’s just one of the government’s commitments to grassroots sports facilities, which totals more than £400m, in order to achieve an ambitious target of getting 3.5m more people active by 2030. Medway Conservatives were delighted to welcome the Culture Secretary to Medway recently, to discuss the importance of culture and sport to Medway.
Councillor Adrian Gulvin, Leader of the Opposition, said
The Medway Labour and Co-Operative administration failed to take the opportunity to back free swimming. We were disappointed, given this was a political priority for our previous administration over a number of years.
This was just one of a number of disappointing decisions at last night's Budget Council meeting, and was one of the contributing factors that led to the opposition voting against the budget.
