Moseley Road Baths reopens for swimming

While the doors were closed to the public for over four months, there was still lots going on behind the scenes. Moseley Road Baths staff and volunteers were busy carrying our repairs, cleaning the building, and completing training to prepare for opening. The work that was done includes:

• Reheating the pool from a low of 6 degrees centigrade up to the usual 28 degrees (the perfect temperature for families and disabled swimmers).
• Installing a new dosing controller funded through Veolia Environment which enables better monitoring of the levels of disinfectant, pH and temperature in the pool. Veolia also funded lagging of steam pipes and boilers which will improve energy efficiency.
• Repairs to major leaks to the pipework in the basement and plant room, carried out by the building owners, Birmingham City Council. This means less water loss and reduced bills, the ability to control the temperature and levels of pH and disinfectant in the pool more easily.
• Training: Moseley Road Baths have run fitness training and competency assessments for their current lifeguards and have also trained five newly qualified female volunteer lifeguards.
• Planning for the opening of a Swim School: This was delayed three times due to Covid and staff are excited to finally be running swimming lessons for children with the launch of a crash courses in May half-term.
• Lots of cleaning by both staff and volunteers: in total hundreds of hours of staff and volunteer time went in to getting the pool ready to reopen!

Since Moseley Road Bath’s doors opened again on 4^th May, swimmers have been very excited to be back in the building. One said, "I feel as if my world has come alive again," and another said that they loved being back and that they “felt a bit emotional being sat by Pool 2 again."

Staff and volunteers are also happy to be back on site, building on all the hard work that has been done since Moseley Road Baths CIO took over running the Baths in 2018. Viv Harrison, General Manager said, "I'm so happy to see our pool being used by our local community once more and very grateful to all of our staff and volunteers for the time and commitment they've shown to help us get our beautiful building ready to open again."  Another member of staff Sadim Garvey said "being back on site at Moseley Road Baths is such a joy, this building has so much to give and I'm eager to pick up from where we left off."

At this exciting time, they are also looking for someone to become the new chair of the board of trustees at, a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference to our remarkable heritage community enterprise. The current chair, Karen Leach, has been in that role with great enthusiasm since the earliest discussions of a community takeover, but feels that now is the time for the venture to benefit from fresh leadership.

For full details of opening times, timetable, information about swimming lessons or to apply for the chair position, visit their website www.moseleyroadbaths.org.uk