The Information: Swimming for free

The free swimming programme, a £140m initiative aimed at improving access to pools for children and older people in England, is coming to an end this summer as a result of the recent government funding cuts.

Thanks to the programme, kids under the age of 16 went swimming free of charge more than 11 million times in the course of 12 months. The over-sixties weren't far behind, accounting for seven million free dips in local authority pools during the same period.

The scrapping of the programme will have the biggest impact in the north-west, where children and the mature population enjoyed the largest number of free swims, and in the north-east, the leading region for free swims per head.

Fewer people will be affected in the south-west and south-east, as a number of local authorities did not participate in the programme.

In London, too, the consequences should be fairly limited as many of its local authorities showed the lowest number of free swims per member of the population.

Source: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

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