Hepburn Shire Council will be asked next Tuesday to abandon any prospect of building an indoor aquatic facility in the shire and to release a long-awaited feasibility study that found every indoor option financially unviable.
The Indoor Aquatics Provision Feasibility Study and Business Case, a key action flowing from the 2022 Aquatics Strategy, assessed five options for the shire’s pools. The three options involving an indoor facility — enclosing the Daylesford pool, a new minimum-service centre, or a new district-level centre — carried capital costs ranging from $17.5 million to $33.9 million, with officers concluding none had a viable funding strategy.
The picture for the existing pools is scarcely brighter. Renewing the shire’s current aquatics assets like-for-like over the next decade is now estimated at around $33 million, a figure officers say cannot be accommodated within Council’s Long Term Financial Plan. Much of the plant, equipment and infrastructure across the pools is near or at the end of its serviceable life.
The shire currently operates three outdoor pools — Clunes and Trentham (both 25m) and Daylesford (50m) — along with toddler pools and the Creswick splash park. Council brought pool operations in-house in 2015 after decades of contracting them out.
Entry to Council aquatics facilities has been free since 2020 but that has failed to increase patronage in the shire pools. According to the Local Government Performance Reporting Framework, attendance at shire pools has fallen every year since 2022. Last year, there were 15,000 pool entries across the three shire pools or 0.94 pool visits per head of population. The cost of operations per entry was $25.19 per swim but this does not include the cost of maintaining the pools (approximately $500,000 per year) which is buried in the capital budget. The real cost per pool entry is closer to $55.00.
Spokesman for the Daylesford Indoor Aquatic Centre, Tim Bach, said this was a disappointing outcome after 10 years of work that DIAC has been doing to promote an indoor facility for Daylesford. “I’m particularly disappointed for the children of our community who have limited opportunities to become safe around water,” he said. “Daylesford is further from an indoor aquatics facility than any other community in the Shire and this presents a significant barrier for families who want to access swimming lessons for their children.
“I’m also disappointed that Council has sat on this report for two years and is now springing the report on the community with little time for analysis or response,” he said.
Officers are recommending Council cease pursuing an indoor facility altogether, and instead establish a community panel to help shape the future direction of aquatics provision. Notably, the proposed engagement would exclude an indoor facility, the upgrade or expansion of existing facilities, and the full renewal of all pools — narrowing the conversation to what officers describe as “financially feasible and responsible” options.
To manage budget risk in the meantime, officers propose a $150,000 per pool cap on urgent major repairs during the 2026/27 season, sufficient to keep pools safe and operational without over-investing in assets whose long-term future is uncertain.
The report situates Hepburn’s predicament within a statewide problem. Pools have closed in recent years at Port Fairy, Maryborough and Cobden, and Life Saving Australia estimates $8 billion is needed across some 500 ageing pools nationally. Council’s February 2026 Priority Projects document calls for a dedicated state funding program to support rural and regional outdoor pools.
