Sustaining Swimming Pools

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 21 March 2023.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:19, 21 March 2023

Well, I thank the Member for that final point. It's often difficult to disentangle where money that comes to Wales through a budget is derived, because money arrives through one funding line and disappears through cuts in another line. In the end, Llywydd, as we know, the decisions about money that comes to Wales are made not in Whitehall, they're made here, where they should be made. And Members here will hear from the finance Minister how she intends to make use of the very small amounts of additional funding, both revenue and capital, that are available as a result of the spring budget.

The Member's general points, of course, are powerful ones, and we discussed last week here the Exmouth experience. When you learn a little bit more about what has been possible in that context, you do come to the conclusion that easy replication of it will be a challenge, because the Exmouth pool is able to use the heat source that it deploys—the data centre—because it is very close by to where that pool is to be found. Nevertheless, the general point that Jenny Rathbone makes is the right one—that, if we are to be able to go on keeping available swimming pools that serve many communities in Wales, and very successfully, then sustainable heating solutions have to be part of that future.