Lengthy swimming lessons waiting lists in Leeds blamed on ‘urgent’ teacher shortage

Leeds City Council said it was trying to train more swimming teachers “every month” in a bid to grow capacity.

The news comes just days after the Swimming Teachers Association (STA) and Swim England said there were 12,000 vacancies across the country – a shortage the latter said needed “urgent” attention.

A backlog of lessons dating back to Covid, when pools were shut, is also a factor behind the waiting list, councillors on the council’s adults and health scrutiny board were told on Tuesday.

Steve Baker, head of the council’s leisure arm, Active Leeds, said: “We do have waiting lists across the board in terms of swimming lessons.

“We’ve now 1,500 more children learning to swim than what we had pre-pandemic.

“There is a backlog from Covid when people weren’t able to get in the pool. We’re just trying to catch up on that front.

“There are workforce issues which prohibit us a bit, because we don’t have the volume of teachers coming through.

“But we’ve made some big improvements. We are now training a lot more swimming teachers every month.”

Mr Baker said 90 per cent of schools across the city were using council-run pools for swimming lessons.

He added: “There are some challenges still, but we are starting to make some headway in terms of the waiting lists.”