Asked by: Danny Chambers (Liberal Democrat - Winchester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many local authority swimming pools have closed in each year since 2015.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government recognises the importance of ensuring public access to swimming and leisure facilities.
Sport England, our Arm’s Length Body for grassroots sport, monitors facilities stock through their Active Places dataset. As of March 2026, 308 local authority swimming pools have closed since 2015 and 272 have opened. A yearly breakdown of closures is below:
| Swimming Pool (Facility) Count | |||||
Closure Year | Diving | Learner/Teaching | Leisure Pool | Lido | Main/General | Total |
2015 | 2 | 13 | 4 | 1 | 20 | 40 |
2016 | 5 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 17 | 36 |
2017 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 16 | 31 |
2018 | 1 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 23 |
2019 | 1 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 16 | 31 |
2020 | 0 | 14 | 5 | 0 | 21 | 40 |
2021 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 14 | 28 |
2022 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 17 | 29 |
2023 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 13 | 20 |
2024 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 13 |
2025 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 9 | 15 |
2026 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Total | 23 | 91 | 27 | 5 | 162 | 308 |