Group diving in to help out Wem pool
A residents' group will take over the running of a town's swimming pool, it has been revealed.
The Friends of Wem Swimming and Lifestyle Centre has agreed to take over the town's pool in Bowens Field from January next year. The group agreed to a request from Wem Town Council to run the centre on its behalf.
The friends group now wants to raise £700,000 to replace the heating and distribution plant, enlarge the gym and build an exercise hall, entrance and changing facilities.
The centre is currently run on behalf of the town council by Teme Leisure, which took the pool on temporarily in 2010 after the previous operator left.
Lease
Malcolm Adkins, member of the group, said: "We are going to take the pool over. The town council will still own it but we will ask for a long lease to run it.
"We need about £700,000 to do the work we want to make it sustainable. We will try and raise the money over the next year.
"We are hopefully going to get £150,000 from Sport England and we are considering asking people to put shares into the pool as well."
On Monday the friends group was awarded £2,000 from Shropshire Council's Wem and Shawbury local joint committee. The money will be used to pay for market research into the scheme to make the pool more sustainable.
Mr Adkins said: "We asked for £2,000, we are putting £1,000 in ourselves and are getting £1,000 from the town council.
"We need the market research to make a case for the pool.
We have got someone to do it for us and we are ready to go on that.
"We want the bits in place because it is a fairly large bidding process with Sport England.
"We plan to do the work in stages."