Bottisham Swimming Club is a non-profit making organization run by volunteers drawn largely from its Membership. We are a small club, having around 90 members although the numbers rise at the beginning of each term as other swimmers come along for a trial.
The swimming club fees are divided into two components; a membership fee and a swimming fee.
The annual membership fee is payable in January of each year (or as soon as a new swimmer joins the club). The level of that fee is set by the Annual General Meeting. In accordance with ASA guidelines members joining after 1st October are registered free with both the ASA and the club.
The membership fee covers ASA dues (in the appropriate category for the swimmer) and some of the administrative costs of running the club's activities (most notably the Club Championships in December and the fees associated with registering the Poolside helpers). It is theoretically possible for someone to be a member of The Bottisham Swimming Club for just the payment of this fee, and therefore be entitled to swim at our Club Championships and other galas.
Swimming fees are currently a flat rate charged on a termly basis. The fee is calculated at a rate of £5 per week in the term regardless of the actual number of sessions the swimmer attends, obviously the more sessions attended the better value it is. We offer a prompt payment reduction (£5 per term) which is detailed in the fees letter each term.
This fee pays for the pool time and the coaches. The terms are not quite equal length, but to give an example the swimming fees for Spring Term 2008 are £60 minus £5 for prompt payment (plus £25 annual Membership fee).
Since none of the committee or poolside helper positons are paid, we rely on an efficient set of administrative systems to minimize the workload.
Our flat rate charging policy is part of that system. It also acts as an incentive for swimmers to attend as many sessions as they possible can. The Club operates on a balanced budget over several years (last year we made a £1400 loss but the year before we made a similar profit). This does require us to make a surplus some years since, every so often, we need to replace equipment or fund the training of Officials.
Without the prompt payment of your fees The Club would rapidly become unviable. If you do not get a fees letter, please look at the News section of the website for details.
We cannot offer a sibling discount for a simple reason. Over half of our club is made up of swimmers with a brother or sister in the club. Any discount would largely be offset by a necessary fee increase to balance the budget.
There is only one category under which we do offer a reduction in the swimming fee, and that is for long-term club members (>4 years) who can only attend one session per week. This rule was introduced in October, 2007 to help retain some of our older swimmers for galas.
It is worth pointing out that there is remarkably little 'slack' within the system, so the actions of each individual swimmer has an affect on all others. As you can appreciate, with a membership of around 90, it only requires a few swimmers not to pay before swimming fees have to be increased by a significant percentage.
There is a perception that the club is rather expensive for younger swimmers who attend the early shorter sessions (30mins on a Wednesday and 45mins Sunday). In fact these sessions are effectively subsidized by the swimmers in the longer sessions. The reason for this is that the early sessions have quite low numbers - typically between (6-12 swimmers). We are aware that the Wednesday session is rather short and, as soon as we judge swimmers to be ready, we invite them to continue on for part of the next session.
The late session on a Monday (8-9pm Impington) is still rather poorly attended and if any swimmer wants to attend it, can they email one of the committee? Whilst the session is run at quite a high standard, one lane is retained for swimmers who are progressing well but need a bit more pool time.