TERMS & CONDITIONS – SWIM CLINIC LTD

To be read in conjunction with our Lesson Information document.

Booking & Pre- Arrival

1. Please only complete an online booking form when you are ready to book lessons.  For enquiries please complete a ‘contact us’ form and to be added to the waiting list please complete a ‘waiting list’ form.
2. Payment is due on receipt of the invoice. If payment has not been received by Swim Clinic 7 days before the start of the course/first lesson date, we reserve the right to offer the place to another swimmer.
3. If payment is not received by 7 days before your first lesson, an admin fee of £15 will be added to your invoice. This fee is non refundable unless the non payment is due to our error.
4. We regret that children will not be permitted to swim if payment has not been made in full (which will include the admin fee if applicable).
5. Please observe the rules of the schools where we swim. Please ensure that you park sensibly, within designated parking areas where parking is provided. When parking on the street please respect local residents by not blocking driveways or dropped kerbs.
6. Standard swim wear to be worn in the pool. Swimming shorts must be above the knee. All in one swimwear is not recommended as unless it’s thermal the child will be colder wearing a wet costume when they get out of the pool. Our pools are all heated so thermal swimwear should not be needed.  Swimwear with zips (often at the back) aren’t suitable for children to wear as it is difficult for them to use the toilet and also to get out of their costume when getting dressed at the end of the lesson.
7. Please send your child with a SMALL bag containing only a towel and their change of clothes. Large bags will not fit in the containers at poolside which are shared by 5/6 children, and so any that are too large will be on the floor and may get wet. The ideal bags are small backpack, swim bag or supermarket bag (not the large bags for life please!).

Arrival

1. Your lesson time is the time the lesson starts and pupils must be in the water ready to start their lesson on time. Therefore please arrive at the entrance door to the pool 10 minutes before your lesson time. 
2. The door will be closed 5 minutes before your lesson start time. Latecomers will have to wait outside the door until the children who have already gone in are ready to swim and the outgoing children have left the poolside area and have either been taken to the changing room or back to their parents. Please don’t enter the building until a member of our staff is there to check you in and take your child to their lesson. Please do not try to enter the pool area by any other entrance other than the usual one. Please also don’t try to access the pool through the school building as this is strictly out of bounds.
3. Please ensure your child has used the toilet before leaving home or at the pool before their lesson starts. Children leaving the lesson to use the toilet during their lesson miss part of their lesson, can get cold and also disrupt the lesson for other pupils.
4. Sorry, but we don’t have a lesson viewing option in the pool buildings we use. However for our regular weekly lessons we offer parent viewing days 6 times a year, on a date to be advised in advance.
5. Parents must remain on site for the duration of the lesson. Please wait in your car or outside the pool entrance door. 
6. No outdoor shoes to be worn inside the pool building. Shoes are to be left where indicated at each venue. No shoes to be taken to poolside or changing rooms, even inside bags. If flip flops or sliders are worn they cannot be worn outside before entering, otherwise they will be treated as outdoor shoes. This is a condition of our pool hire.
7. During the colder weather please remove your child’s coat at the door and bring it back at the end of the lesson. We have nowhere to store coats in the pool area. 
8. Pupils must wear swim hats in the pool – this is a stipulation of our hire of the pool as hair can damage the pool plant room equipment (through which the pool water is circulated). Goggles are optional. Both hats and goggles are for sale at poolside.

Lessons

1. Your child should not eat for 1 hour prior to swimming. Not observing this can lead to a child being sick in the pool and result in the closure of the pool and cancellation of lessons (not just our lessons) for 24 hours. We may be billed for the cost of the closure.
2. Lessons run back to back and we regret that it isn’t possible for the teacher or admin staff member to enter into conversation with you before or after your lesson. This would reduce the swimming time for the next class. If you want to know how your child is progressing you can check their progress via the Client Hub. Details of how to access this are on each invoice issued and you will need to register for the service. This is updated regularly by the teacher. Please note that we are unable ask teachers for individual updates but if you have any specific concerns regarding your child’s progress please contact office@swimclinic.co.uk. Please note that every part of the syllabus has to be seen to be performed consistently and competently to Swim England’s standards, and observed by their teacher over several lessons.
3. Your child must only enter the pool when instructed to do so by their swimming teacher. Children must leave the pool immediately after their lesson ends and are not permitted to be in or play in the pool outside their lesson time.
4. Children must at all times adhere to the instructions given by the teacher for their own safety and the safety of others in the pool.
5. No bombing or diving allowed.
6. Please talk to your child before their first lesson so they understand what will be happening. This will help them to settle and there will be no surprises. 
7. If your child is a beginner, it is completely normal for him/her to be nervous – due to the new environment, unfamiliar faces or the echo sounds in the pool area. We are used to dealing with this and will do all we can to encourage your child to participate. Please help us by explaining to your child what is going to happen. Please be guided by our staff – we find that children are normally happy to come into their lesson even when they are a little nervous. Please talk to the admin member of staff about any concerns, or call one of the admin team to discuss. We will work with you to ensure your child settles.
8. We teach in line with the Swim England Learn to Swim Programme. For our regular weekly swimmers, when a child attains each stage they will be rewarded with a certificate and badge, which are free of charge.   
9. During our holiday swimming courses we are not officially appraising progress, and so certificates and badges aren’t routinely awarded. However, if one of our regular term time swimmers is ready to move up a certificate & badge will be awarded at the first lesson of the new swimming term and this is free of charge. For holiday swimmers who are not our regular swimmers, if a teacher feels they are ready to pass their current stage we will issue a certificate and badge if requested by the child’s parent, cost £5.50. The certificate & badge can be collected from our central collection point in Harwell once payment has been received. Our holiday swimming courses are primarily for keeping skills up during the holiday period, or to give the pupil a boost with their progress. Pupils who swim at other swim schools on a regular basis will get rewarded by their own swim school if appropriate and if they don’t wish to purchase an award from us. 
10. Please don’t be concerned if children are not moving through a stage as quickly as you expected as all children progress at different rates. 
11. At the end of the term you will be offered another place for the following term unless we advise to the contrary, for example due to pool availability. If you want to stop your lessons at the end of the current course, please give us 14 days’ notice, by email, to be received by us 14 days before the end of the current term, otherwise a fee of £25 will be charged. 
12. We continually monitor swimming progress and may move pupils up to a new class part way through the term. We cannot guarantee that we can offer the same time or the same teacher.
13. We try to keep lesson times as offered, but it may occasionally be necessary to move pupils to a different class time or class level, either at the start of the term or part way through.
14. We do our best to keep continuity of teaching staff but it may sometimes be necessary to substitute a teacher.
15. We will make every endeavour not to cancel lessons, however occasionally this is outside of our control, for example due to pool malfunction, staff sickness etc. We will contact all parents affected using the contact information supplied to us.  It is therefore vital to ensure that any changes to contact details are advised to us. Please also make sure that you check phone messages, emails and our Facebook page on lesson days, as pools are often closed at short notice and teachers can be sick at short notice.

Cancellation

1. Refund policy.  We operate a no refund policy, but we will offer a replacement lesson on production of a medical confirmation or certificate. In the rare occurrence when a pupil is unable to return due to a long term severe illness we will consider a credit note taking each individual case into account.  We regret that no refund/replacement lesson or credit note will be given for non-attendance such as, but not limited to, minor illness, change of mind, child refusing to join the class, holiday or other commitments.
2. If Swim Clinic has to cancel a lesson, we will offer a replacement lesson. Day, date and time subject to availability. The replacement lesson must be taken within 6 weeks of the cancellation date. We regret that we can’t offer a refund in lieu of the replacement lesson.
3. At the end of the term you will be offered another place for the following term unless we advise to the contrary, for example due to pool availability. If you want to cancel your place at the end of the current course, please give us 14 days’ notice, by email, to be received by us 14 days before the end of term, otherwise a fee of £25 will be charged.
4. Once a booking has been made, confirmed by us and an invoice issued, if the booking is subsequently cancelled by the client before payment has been made, a £25 admin fee will be charged, as well as payment for any lessons received and not already paid for and also lessons up to 14 days after the date when cancellation is received.
5. Once paid for lessons are strictly non refundable.

Sickness

1. For health and safety reasons your child must not swim if he or she has vomited or had diarrhoea within the previous 48 hours. If your child has virulent diarrhoea please seek medical advice and if diagnosed with crystosporidium or campylobacter we cannot accept him/her back into lessons until 14 days after the last episode of diarrhoea.
2. If your child has a verruca please ensure it is either covered with a swim sock, or has been treated with a treatment which seals over the verruca.
3. If your child becomes unwell or is injured during the lesson we will contact you to come to poolside.  For this reason please stay on site whilst your child’s lesson is taking place. 
4. Plasters are not permitted as they come off in the water and clog the pump. Please remove any plasters before the lesson. If the injury is severe enough for a plaster to be worn then we regret that your child will be unable to swim.
5. If your child is unwell before leaving home please don’t bring them to their lesson. It isn’t fair to your child or to others. 

If the swimmer is showing covid symptoms or symptoms of any other infectious disease, please do not attend the lesson. We reserve the right to refuse admission to anyone presenting with such symptoms.

• Please advise us if your child is ill and unable to attend.
• Please advise us if your child tests positive for covid or any other infectious disease.

Miscellaneous

1.  No food or drink to be brought into the building, apart from water. This includes the changing rooms.
2. No mobile phones to be used at poolside.
3. Strictly no cameras to be used in the pool area, including mobile phone cameras. We have to consider the safety of all our pupils. Even if your child is in a 1:1 lesson this rule still applies due to teacher privacy. The no camera rule also applies at our seasonal pools where photos of the pool can be taken from outside the building.
4. Swim Clinic does not accept responsibility for spectators whilst on site.
5. Swim Clinic is responsible for your child during their lesson and also whilst in the building if their parents are not invited into the poolside area or changing rooms.
6. Children are the responsibility of their parent when the parent is in the changing room with them.
7. Parents are requested to maintain control of children that are not swimming and to remove noisy or disruptive children. Please be constantly aware that the pool can be a dangerous place for children who are unsupervised. 
8. Our communication with you is primarily electronic. Please advise us of any email or phone number changes. Please check your spam folder regularly.
9. Please regularly check our website www.swimclinic.co.uk and Facebook page www.facebook.com/swimclinic
10. We do sometimes have problems with emails going to spam folders. If you have an email address provided by hotmail, gmail or btinternet (all of these are notorious for sending our emails to spam folders, most frequent is hotmail), please go to your provider’s web page, log in to your account and add our email addresses admin@swimclinic.co.uk and office@swimclinic.co.uk to your provider’s ‘safe sender’ list or alternatively provide us with another email address.
11. Lost property – items left behind are taken to our central collection point in Harwell after the lesson.  We do not have storage for lost property at any of the pools we use. If you are missing an item please email the office to see if we have it and if we do you will be able to collect it from the address on our invoices. Collection can be at any time once you have checked with us that we have it, and your item will be in a box with our logo on the lid. We’re sorry but we are unable to offer collection from the pool venue. Items not claimed within 14 days will be disposed of. Please make sure all your belongings are named. 
12. Please do not allow your children to use play equipment within school grounds.  his is forbidden by the schools and children are not covered by insurance.
13. All the pools we hire are self contained but located on school property. It is strictly forbidden to access any of the school buildings or other part of the school grounds other than paths between the pool and the parking facility. 
14. Abusive behaviour. We have a duty to protect our staff and other clients and therefore we will not tolerate abusive behaviour, whether verbal, written or physical. Such behaviour may result in immediate cancellation of your swimming place without refund.
15. Sorry but dogs are not permitted in any part of the schools we use, including the grounds.
16. Please remember to tell us if there are any medical changes for your child, or any other changes that you think we need to be aware of.