Author: Andy
Category: Message to all our clients
Message to all our clients
4 March 2021 Update:
Pending UK Government confirmation, we are planning to reopen on the first day that swimming pools can reopen on Monday 12th April. We have extended all client credits for free for the same length of time as the government prevented swimming lessons from going ahead. Existing client expiry dates have now been updated on your individual online accounts. To view your new expiry dates, please login and select “Series Book” on the left hand side.
We are now liaising with hotels to confirm the pool slots and expect to release availability in the third or fourth week in March. Please keep an eye on the bookings page where all bookings and cancellations are made. We are unable to accept bookings or cancellations made in any other way than through the online bookings portal.
Our open water swim coaching sessions at the Docklands Sailing and Watersports Centre have now been confirmed and can be booked online.
We look forward to welcoming you to our adult swimming lessons again shortly.
31 December 2020 Update:
All venues, except Exeter (Tier 3), have moved into Tier 4 and so non-essential businesses have been closed by the UK government. All Tier 4 lessons are cancelled up to and including 12 January 2021 when the next government review of the tier system is due.
All credits are extended for free for the same length of time as this closure. The new credit expiry dates will be reflected upon your individual online booking portal account on the day we can reopen.
20 December 2020 Update:
London has now moved into Tier 4 and so non-essential businesses have been closed by the UK government from today until 30 December 2020 inclusive. All London credits are extended for free for the same length of time as this closure. The new credit expiry dates will be reflected upon your individual online booking portal account on the day that London reopens.
To see your old expiry date, login and select Series Book on the left hand side.
14 December 2020 Update:
We are unaffected by London moving into Tier 3 on 16 December as gyms and health clubs can remain open with one-to-one coaching still permitted. All our sessions being on a one-to-one basis using social distancing and swimming being in chlorine treated pools. Come and swim, there isn’t much else to do!
27 November 2020 Update:
Frequently asked questions
We are now in discussions with all other venues. If other venues become available then we will release the availability on our bookings page for you to book. We will also update this page, so please check the link for regular updates.
All London credits are extended by 27 days for free, the same length of the London closure. Your new expiry dates will be on your accounts by the time we reopen.
Weekday off-peak lessons can be used at Marriott County Hall for the month of December only and these are with instructors Leanne and David.
Unfortunately not. As per our terms and conditions, “If one or more of our London hotel venues closes for a prolonged period, then credits are to be used at the remaining London hotel venues without any additional variations to our terms and conditions.”
1 November 2020 update:
1 November 2020: The Government has ordered all swimming pools to close from Thursday 5 November. We will freeze all accounts from 5 November, with credits extended for free for the length of time that we are unable to operate in a City. For example, a 4 week closure in London will result in all London credits being extended for free for 4 weeks. New credit expiry dates will be on your accounts when we reopen. All lessons on or before 4 November go ahead as planned.
15 September 2020 Update:
We are operating and taking bookings at 5 London locations. For the latest availability please select a venue on our bookings page. We expect lessons to resume at Jury’s Inn Holborn and Marriott Worsley Park at some time during October.
We are unaffected by the maximum size of gatherings being 6, with all our sessions being on a one-to-one basis using social distancing and swimming being in chlorine treated pools.
27 July 2020 Update: Our London swimming lessons have restarted.
Our adult swimming lessons have restarted in London.
All ‘anytime’ credits are now live and have automatically been extended for 4 months and 1 week, the length of the London closure. We are unable to offer any variations on expiry dates or changes to our terms and conditions.
Covid-19 Health and Safety
After the UK government declared that swimming pools could reopen again, we have liaised with health club management and our health and safety advisors at Citation.
Our instructors have had extensive retraining in line with our health and safety advisors, and we have written a new risk assessment process to reflect the new world we live in. Although the UK government recommendations are for 1 meter + social distancing, we are aiming to implement a 2 meter social distancing policy. We recommend that you leave all belongings, including your towel in the changing room lockers provided. Please bring along your own swimming goggles to the lesson as we can no longer lend these to clients.
As we spend much of our time around swimming pools and the docks, we can respond more effectively to emails. Our telephone hours are Mondays and Thursdays from 10am until 12noon starting on Monday 3 August.
We look forward to welcoming you back to our London lessons.
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9 July 2020 Update:
Dear Clients,
Thank you so much for the many, many happy and supportive emails you have sent us about our plans for reopening. It’s just great to know that the work we have been doing in lockdown, and the fear and confusion that we, both as a business and as individuals, have been going through is now drawing to a close and we will be able to get back to doing what we love, swimming and teaching swimming.
For those of you who are not going to be able to use the credits they bought, we offered a redemption program, which has now expired, and so our standard terms and conditions are now operational.
We have carried out additional health and safety training, following advice from our health and safety advisors, making changes to adapt to Covid-19. This has enabled us to reopen for open water swim coaching.
With regard to booking pool slots, we are liaising with hotel management to get our restart dates confirmed. We are aiming to restart lessons on Monday 27 July in London and Manchester, with our other city venues following shortly after. As soon as we have confirmation from hotels then we will release dates on our new booking software.
As soon as we are able to accept bookings again, we will email all clients who currently have credits with us. If you would like to be added to our mailing list for reopening information, please email office@turnerswim.co.uk.
12 June 2020 Update – Open water swim coaching in London:
Head Coach Andrew is providing a limited number of one-to-one open water swim coaching sessions on Thursday’s and Friday’s in July. These exclusive sessions are priced at £85.00 and include use of a wetsuit too. Visit our open water swim coaching page for further information.
Returning from Lockdown – 12 June 2020 – email to all clients with valid credits on 21 March being sent out on 12 June:
Dear Client of Turner Swim,
Please accept our apologies for sending a general email, but we wanted to communicate with all our clients with regard to any outstanding Credits that you may have had on the 21st March when the pools were shut.
As you may recall, what we did at that time was to automatically extend credits for free during the UK Government’s forced closure. For example, a 4 month closure gives a free 4 month extension of credits. You may also recall from our terms and conditions that we do not offer refunds.
We anticipate shortly being able to start pool lessons again, and this means that the credits will start being active again. We are anticipating being able to reopen hotel lessons sometime between 4 July and 20 July and this is dependent on the hotels. Our open water swim coaching restarts on 1 July. However, we are mindful of the fact that much has changed in the last three months or so in unexpected ways, and your ability or desire to enjoy swimming sessions may be one of those things.
To reflect this, we have decided that as an “Ex Gratia” action. We are offering all clients with outstanding credits after the 20th March the ability to obtain a refund for unused credits, less a redemption fee of £16.50 per credit. This “ex gratia” offer will expire in 14 days time at midnight on 26 June 2020. We are unable to offer any refunds after this date. We will then know how many clients and credits we have outstanding, so that we can plan for the correct level of staffing once we reopen.
We are a small business and do not, and have not, received any form of grant from the government. We were able to “furlough” the majority of our staff, but there were, and continue to be, many unavoidable expenses during this period of lockdown. The £16.50 fee represents the proportion of costs over the period. What of course we would love best is for you to come back and have a great swimming session. If we face a significant number of cancellations, we will of course have to inevitably make some of our instructors redundant.
Account client:
20 March Update: What are the UK Government restrictions for health clubs during the coronavirus?
At 5pm on Friday 20 March, the UK government told health clubs to close that evening. Until this time we were still very much open and delivering our one-to-one adult swimming lessons. We were taking precautions that we have outlined below.
We very much look forward to reopening once the UK government allows us to. We will extend all credit for the duration of the health club closures for free automatically. For example, once a swimming pool reopens in London in 2 weeks time, then all London credits will be extended by 2 weeks automatically on client accounts.
Up until 20 March we were open, and encouraging clients to come and swim with us
Our swimming lessons were still in operation in 4 London hotels until closing time on Friday 20 March. In Manchester were were open at Marriott’s Worsley Park Manchester until Tuesday 17 March.
In the weeks before this, we updated our risk assessment and introduced a number of precautions and additional staff training, in order to continue operating our London and Manchester lessons. Turner Swim work with a health and safety consultant at Citation, so we are being kept up to date. With one-to-one lessons in luxury hotels, we feel that we took sufficient precautions, and followed UK government advice so that we were still operating. Our lessons are very different from group lessons in leisure centres or gyms. The hotels we operate from were generally much quieter than usual. Many clients were lucky and saw very few people in the hotel. We were still very much open and we planed to rotate instructors if any got sick.
As of 16 March, Public Public Health England said that their national leads “confirm that coronavirus would be inactivated at the levels of chlorine used in swimming pools.”
Do we have a change to our usual terms and conditions?
Yes – one change from 21 March 2020. We will extend all credits for free for the length of time that we have a pool closure. For example, if we see a two week pool closure then we will extend the credit validity by two weeks. We will do this automatically once a venue reopens.
Up until 20 March we were still running our usual terms and conditions, with a 36 hour cancellation policy. We always automatically book our instructors at 36 hours notice and pay the instructors for their bookings.
Our packages of 5 x one hour lessons are valid for 6 months from the date of purchase. Our 10 x one hour lessons for 8 months from the date of purchase. A one hour lesson is valid for 3 months from the date of purchase. As a business, we have a commitment to provide our lessons to those who have purchased them and we also have fixed costs too.
If you wish to not swim for now then your credits can be extended for a cost of £12 per credit per month, as long as this upgrade is made before the package expiry date. We still have a 36 hour cancellation policy on all bookings. Please email office@turnerswim.co.uk to make the upgrade.
What happens if my credits expired on 20 March or before then, do I get a free extension?
No – we continued providing our adult swimming lessons until Friday 20 March as the UK government advice was that pubs, clubs, theaters and leisure centers only needed to close after we had finished lessons on the evening of Friday 20 March.
If your credits expire between 21 March and when our hotel reopens then your credits are extended for free, to match the length of time the UK government closed our hotels for.
I am over 70 or have a pre-existing medical condition, should I still attend my swimming lessons?
No – as of 17 March onwards we advised against attending your lessons. We will extend the duration of your package for free on receipt of either a copy of your passport page (if aged 70 or over), or on receipt of a letter from the hospital clinic you regularly attend (if you have a pre-existing chronic medical condition). This will be done as a goodwill gesture on the basis that we receive your email to office@turnerswim.co.uk
Does swimming help my immune system?
In April 2018, John P. Campbell and James E. Turner wrote the medical paper “Debunking the Myth of Exercise-induced immune suppression: redefining the impact of exercise on immunological health across the lifespan.”
They concluded that “lifelong physical activity is a potent means of reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic inflammatory disorders. Evidence also shows that a physically active lifestyle diminishes the risk of contracting a range of communicable diseases including viral and bacterial infections.”
So along with eating a balanced diet, we believe in exercising regularly too. Keep an eye on our blogs page where we plan to provide nutrition and work out advice while we fight through the Coronavirus issue together.
Our instructors would love to see you
Our instructors would love to see you for your next session session. Primarily because they each really enjoy swimming teaching and each want to continue working with our clients. Our instructors are keen to be able to work while ever they are fit and healthy.
We want to inspire you into swimming for life. When the world around us is going into unprecedented times, then there is nothing like switching off for an hour and swimming. We love the feeling of achievement and the endorphins after we swim and we hope that you will very much enjoy these too.
