Our first action of the year was to award Dave Whittingham and Andy Elphick Life Membership of PWTAG in recognition of their dedication to the group and extensive work undertaken on our behalf. We wish them a happy retirement.
The Executive welcomed Richard Lamburn and Tom Devin to their ranks and looks forward to the new ideas and momentum that they will bring.
It has been another busy year for PWTAG which saw the publication of the first of our three new booklets for spas and hot tubs, ‘Hot Tubs for Business’ and it’s launch at our second Annual Conference. We are still busy producing the Pool Water Pocket Guide and are hoping to launch that at our next Annual Conference in November 2019.
We are busy producing the Pool Water Pocket Guide and hoping to launch it at our next Annual Conference in November 2019.
This year has seen an increase in membership of the Industry Forum which seems to go from strength to strength under the guidance of the Chair Simon Whittingham and Vice Chair Stephen Ellix. So if you want to make a difference then now’s the time to sign up and participate in our new ventures.
The Training Forum has been busy producing new syllabi for spa pools, hot tubs, paddling pools, interactive water features, equine and canine pools. These are being finalised as we speak and will be progressively be published on the website for trainers to utilise for their PWTAG course approval.
Increasing administrative costs have meant that we needed to change our administrative organisation and as most of you probably know we moved to Swim England to provide these services at the end of March 2019.
This has involved a lot of additional work for the Executive and the setting up of the new website which is still developing. We believe that there is much synergy between the two organisations and many benefits associated with this move.
Our focus this year is to increase our public awareness and to that end a PR forum has been set up. The team together with our Technical Editor, Brian Guthrie, are currently looking at ways of promoting us and the work we do. This will include articles, seminars and other new initiatives.
As part of this we hope to increase membership benefits and bring PoolMark accreditation to the forefront of the industry by offering an inspection service and appraisal. The membership scheme continues to grow in strength and enables external bodies to have an involvement in setting PWTAG standards.
We continue to have a presence and involvement with EU standards through BSi and various members are attending the different swimming and spa pool committees on our behalf keeping us at the forefront of knowledge.
What does the future hold, well we have two more publications in the pipeline, Domestic spa pools, and Commercial spas and then of course by the time they are launched our hydrotherapy pool publication will need reviewing. So there is another busy year ahead!
I would like to thank all the members and their organisations for the contributions they have made to the group this year and long may it continue.
Janice Calvert, PWTAG Chair; 15 July 2019