Plans, policies and reports
Swimming pool strategy
Contents | Introduction | Summary of issues |
Council’s objectives for swimming pools |
Planning framework and guiding principles | Provision |
Management | Implementation |
Appendices
Introduction
Strategic overview
Auckland City Council has had a long association with Auckland’s swimming pools – from establishing one of the city’s
first pools in Custom Street in 1881, to its current involvement with 11 swimming facilities.
Auckland City has a vision, stated in its Strategic Plan, to make Auckland the First City of the Pacific. A priority is
to build strong and healthy communities and to increase the numbers of people involved in sport, community and recreation
activities. Swimming pools play an important role in achieving these goals and this strategy will help clarify how
the council intends to achieve them.
In November 1999, the council adopted a Leisure policy, which provides the rationale for its involvement in leisure,
including sport and recreation. The policy acts as the bridge between high-level strategic aims and day-to-day operations.
It establishes a philosophy, principles and values that underpin the council’s involvement. The swimming pool strategy further
clarifies the council’s involvement in swimming-related leisure.
There are a number of strategies/policies that either influence or should be recognised in the swimming pool strategy,
which are summarised as follows:.
- Community resources model – a tool to assist planning decisions regarding the location of community resources
- Sense of place – investigates the "sense of place" elements for Auckland and identifies a process for
incorporating sense of place philosophy and principles into developing, managing and maintaining Auckland public spaces
and facilities
- Recreation precinct strategy – groups community and recreation facilities together in a precinct to provide a
focus for recreation activity
- Sports facility strategy – gives a strategic framework for the provision of sports facilities and provides guidance
on funding the development of sports facilities
- Facility partnership policy – sets out the principles, procedures and criteria for the council either seeking
partnerships or responding to other organisations’ funding proposals for the developing community facilities
- Leisure facilities asset management plan – defines the key levels of service for leisure facilities as defined by
this swimming pools strategy, and identifies costs for operation, maintenance, renewal and new works
- Liveable communities 2050 strategy – this strategy is intended to manage growth and its effects within the city over
the next 50 years
Purpose and scope
The purpose of the swimming pool strategy is to guide the council’s involvement in providing, developing and managing
swimming pools in Auckland City.
The strategy has been developed through research, consultation and analysis. The views of key groups have been canvassed
through:
- User focus groups – four focus groups were held to obtain feedback from individual, casual and member users of the
council’s swimming pools
- Stakeholders – a forum was held for the major user groups, including groups for competitive swimming, waterpolo, underwater
hockey, paraolympics, special needs and water safety
- Operators – a forum was held for the current operators of the council’s swimming pools.
This strategy focuses on Auckland City’s actions for swimming pools over the next 20 years. The strategy should be reviewed
every three to five years. The provision of swimming pools by other groups, particularly private operators and schools, has been
recognised and the council has adopted a regional perspective, taking into account swimming pools in the Auckland region.
There are nine strategies divided under headings of provision and management. For each strategy there are a number of actions
to implement the strategy. A broad time frame has been set up which uses the following scale.
Key for action priorities
- High priority – to be actioned in the next one to five years.
- Medium-term priority – to be actioned between five to 10 years.
- Long-term priority – to be actioned in 10 plus years.
- On going – will be actioned throughout the next 20 years.
A complete summary and rationale of the research for this strategy is provided in the background information document.
Published September 2002
