Lost the aquatic team.
Replaced them with a schedule that doesn't depend on people.
When Flitwick's aquatic instructors left in early 2025, the trust faced two options: cancel the programme or rebuild it. They picked a third — and 12 months later run more aqua than before, at higher fill, with zero instructor headcount.
Flitwick Leisure Centre · Bedfordshire · Everyone Active · Hydrohex since early 2025
0
aquatic instructors required for the weekly schedule
80%
Hydrohex fill rate over 12 tracked months
7 → 12
weekly sessions after launch — schedule expanded on demand
4,092
Hydrohex attendances across 341 sessions in 12 months
Source: Flitwick Leisure Centre booking system data supplied by Everyone Active · 12-month period Feb 2025 – Jan 2026 · 341 Hydrohex sessions tracked.
The story
When losing the team became the operator's best moment to upgrade the programme.
In early 2025, Flitwick Leisure Centre — a busy Everyone Active site in Bedfordshire — lost most of its aquatic instructors through organisational changes. The traditional response would have been familiar to anyone in the sector: thin the schedule, post sympathetic cancellation notices, and start a recruitment campaign that probably won't close the gap in a meaningful timeframe.
General Manager Gemma Garner-Higgins picked a different path. The trust used the moment to introduce Hydrohex — and the response was immediate. Sessions filled the moment they opened. Within weeks the team had nearly doubled the weekly schedule, from 7 to 12 sessions a week, all running on the same virtual format.
Twelve months in, the numbers are unambiguous: 80% fill rate across 341 sessions, 4,092 attendees, £0.98 per participant. More aqua than before. Higher fill than live ever delivered at the site. Zero aquatic instructor headcount required.
In the operator's words
“Hydrohex really came at the right time for us and it didn't disappoint. In early 2025, we lost most of our aqua instructors due to organisational changes, so we decided it was the perfect moment to introduce Hydrohex at our centre. The response was fantastic — the classes were fully booked almost immediately, which led us to increase our weekly schedule from seven to twelve sessions.”
Gemma Garner-Higgins
General Manager, Flitwick Leisure Centre
Head-to-head at the same site
Hydrohex beats both live aqua and dry-side virtual — on fill rate AND volume.
Flitwick runs all three pool group-class formats. Over the same 12-month period, Hydrohex outperformed the live aqua programme on attendance and outperformed dry-side virtual on fill rate by 3×.
Fill rate per session
Sessions delivered (12 months)
Source: Flitwick Leisure Centre booking data, 12 months (Feb 2025 – Jan 2026). All three formats ran in parallel at the same site.
Deployment summary
The setup behind the numbers.
- Operator type
- National chain — Everyone Active
- Site format
- Leisure centre with aquatic facility
- Launch context
- Early 2025 — following loss of aquatic instructor team
- Sessions per week
- 12 (expanded from 7 at launch on demand)
- Data period analysed
- 12 months · Feb 2025 – Jan 2026
- Cost per participant
- £0.98 (Hydrohex sessions, 12-month average)
- Share of pool group classes
- 77% of all pool group-class attendance
- Location
- Flitwick · Bedfordshire
The bigger picture
Why this matters at every UK pool.
This isn't a site-specific playbook. UK aquatic operators face the same equation: a finite pool estate, expensive to maintain, serving an ageing audience, with a shrinking aquatic workforce.
Workforce crisis
~12,000
vacant UK aquatic-sector roles
Swim England + STA Workforce Audit · Jun 2023 ↗Staffing-shock resilience
Zero-instructor
weekly schedule — runs identically through every team change, illness, or rota gap
Verified by Flitwick: 12 sessions/wk maintained after full aquatic team loss
What this case teaches operators
Every operator's class schedule has a single point of failure: the instructor showing up. Flitwick proves you can take that dependency out of the system entirely — and not lose the class. The team that used to deliver these sessions doesn't need to exist for the timetable to keep running, the bookings to keep coming, or the fill rate to keep beating the live equivalent. When the rota changes, the timetable doesn't. That's the lever for every operator who's lost an aquatic team and is patching the gap with cancellations.
Sources & methodology(8 citations)
- 1
Gemma Garner-Higgins (General Manager, Flitwick Leisure Centre) on staffing-crisis response and Hydrohex uptake
Operator quoteGemma Garner-Higgins, GM · supplied to Hydrohex
- 2
80% Hydrohex fill rate · 341 sessions · 4,092 attendees · 12-month tracking period (Feb 2025 – Jan 2026)
Site dataFlitwick Leisure Centre booking system data · supplied to Hydrohex by Everyone Active
- 3
Comparison fill rates: Hydrohex 80% vs live aqua 76% vs dry-side virtual 27% (same site, same period)
Site dataFlitwick Leisure Centre booking system · 12 months tracked across all pool group-class formats
- 4
Schedule expansion 7 → 12 sessions per week post-launch
Site dataFlitwick Leisure Centre operations · Everyone Active
- 5
£0.98 cost per participant for Hydrohex sessions (12-month average)
Site dataFlitwick Leisure Centre · Hydrohex programme economics
- 6
22 million UK adults aged 50+ by 2035 (growing demand)
Industry researchONS 2022-based national population projections ↗
- 7
~4,400 swimming pools across ~3,256 sites in the UK (finite supply)
Industry researchWIRH UK pool register, 2023 ↗
- 8
~12,000 vacant UK aquatic-sector roles (~15% workforce shortage)
Industry researchSwim England & STA Workforce Audit, June 2023 ↗
Run the same playbook at your pool.
30-minute call. We'll walk through how Flitwick replaced its aquatic team with a 12-session weekly schedule that beats the live format on fill rate — and what a deployment would look like for your facility.