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We Are Balsall Heath

On Sunday 22nd April, Moseley Road will be closed between 8am and 7pm for the “We Are Balsall Heath” Mela. The organisers will have stalls all along the route and Trustees of the CIO plus members of the Friends of MRB will be in front of Moseley Road Baths.

Come and visit our stall to have a chat about our efforts to keep swimming at Moseley Road Baths, find out about our plans for the future and let us know if you think you would be able to volunteer some of your time to help us!

From the stall we will be arranging some short tours of the building, bearing in mind that Pool 2 will in use until 1:30pm. The Gala Pool will still be out of bounds, unfortunately, but we can show you other unseen areas of the Grade II* listed building.

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Nearly ready for saturday! – and future weekends…

We’ve all been working incredibly hard – staff, volunteers and trustees – to get our systems up and running for reopening on Saturday, and we’re looking forward to seeing as many people as possible then. We’ll have refreshments, information, tours and most importantly SWIMMING – though we’re afraid the showers are out of action due to a technical hitch with the repairs the council did over the week…

We’ve also had to make some hard decisions about normal weekends, after this saturday. Because our agreement with the council has not been finalised, the council staff are still in place – we’re very grateful for their patience – but fitting their existing hours to our new timetable has proved a challenge. we have a great volunteer We have therefore had to reduce saturday and sunday opening times for the next few weeks. It might be possible to hire the pool during these times, but this will have to depend on staff availability. See the timetable for more info. We do hope this

Massive thanks to everyone – volunteers, city council staff and everyone else – who has helped during this challenging week. There are too many complete heroes to mention.

Karen Leach

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Aspire Channel Swim

Filming today at Moseley Road Baths, Aspire are creating a promotional video for their 2018 Channel Swim.  Visit their website for more details:

https://www.aspire.org.uk/Event/aspire-channel-swim

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Moseley Road Baths is Re-Opening!

Although Moseley Road Baths is closed to the public this week while we get everything ready, it will be open again on Saturday 9th April for three special family swimming sessions:

9:00 – 10:30am
10:45 – 12:15pm
12:30 -2:00pm

There will be a short break between each session to clear the pool and swimming will be on a first come, first served basis!

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Here is an important update from Karen Leach from the Moseley Road Baths Charitable Incorporated Organisation, who will be taking on the running of swimming facilities at the Baths from the start of April.  There will be some changes to swimming timetables, lessons and prices, so do have a read and watch this space for further updates.

As you know the MRB CIO is due to take over the pool soon, and you might be wondering how this is going to affect you and your regular swimming activities. We can’t answer every question yet but here are some initial tips!

  • The new schedule is under development and will be here as soon as we can get it to you. Club and school times will be similar to now, and we’ll have some public swim sessions including women only.
  • There may be a few days’ closure after our official handover date of 3rd April, while we set up our systems and train staff and volunteers. Again we will let you know as soon as we can!
  • The price for a public swim remains the same.
  • We will not be joining the council’s membership scheme, so if you have a direct debit set up with the council which you only use for your MRB swimming, then you may want to stop this and go back to paying per session on the day. We hope to develop a membership scheme soon.
  • We will be running Be Active sessions, as now, which provide free swimming within certain times.
  • We are not permitted to join the council’s Passport to Leisure scheme, which provides concessionary swimming. We’re really sorry about this, but it is important to us to keep swimming affordable for everyone, so we will work up our own concessionary system as soon as we can.
  • Children’s swimming lessons will initially be provided through local swim school ‘Diamond’, who cost a bit more thanStrokes but have a very good reputation. As above, we hope to provide a more affordable solution for those on low incomes in the near future – sorry this is not happening straight away.
  • We are about to start formally recruiting volunteers for reception, cleaning and lifeguarding – thanks to everyone who has shown interest and we look forward to working with you! If you’ve already given us your contact details we will be in touch very soon.

Please let us have any feedback or queries! keepswimming@moseleyroadbaths.org.uk . We’re very busy preparing to operate but will reply as soon as we can.

Finally – for those that are happy in pubs and like cake… the Old Moseley Arms will be holding a Cake Bake-off to raise funds for us, on 2nd March evening. Come along, have a slice ‘for donation’ and even make a cake to enter into the competition.

Look forward to seeing you at the pool soon!