The British Association for Natural Swimming Pools (BANSP)

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March 12th 2012

BANSP News and Events

BANSP workshop

The next BANSP workshop is being held on Monday 12th March at Foxhills Hotel and Spa, Ottershaw, Surrey.

For more information please email info@bansp.org or call 020 7226 2253.

Sept 28th-30th 2011

The 6th International Congress on swimming ponds took place from September 28-30 2011 under the slogan “Natural Swimming Pools without limits” in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. The bi-annual event for the rapidly growing swimming pond industry attracted about 300 participants from all over the world. For more information see www.iob-kongress.com. 

In attendance from BANSP were: Tim Evans and Frank Drewes (Gartenart), David Nettleton (Clear Water Revival), Steve Day (Anglo Swimming Ponds), Paul Mercer and Johan Vandenburg-Hider (The Swimming Pond Company), and Andy Jones (Ebb and Flow). 

Prior to the 3-day event in Budweiss we also visited several public and private swimming ponds in different parts of Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. 

Overall the week was, as always, an excellent opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with fellow swimming pond builders in different parts of the world, as well as learning about new developments and experiences from conference speakers.

This event was also notable for its more international flavour than in previous years, reaching far beyond the traditional swimming pond heartlands of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.  We had excellent speakers from Israel, South Africa and Australia, as well as many participants from non-German speaking countries such as Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark, and of course the UK.

29th Sept 20100

On 29th September 2010 the BANSP held our inaugural conference at Capel Manor College in Enfield, Middlesex. 

In attendance were 15 representatives from UK swimming pond companies, as well as Chris Hayes from BSPF (British Swimming Pool Federation), and Tom Devin and Howard Gosling representing PWTAG (Pool Water Treatment Advisory Group).  We were also very lucky to have as guest speakers Udo Schwarzer and Stefan Bruns, from Portugal and Germany respectively, and who both sit on the board of the international umbrella organization IOB. 

Udo’s and Stefan’s experience was essential, both in terms of providing a framework for us in building the industry in this country, and also to communicate with those from the conventional pool industry who were understandably interested in health standards and water quality.  In particular Stefan Bruns presented a considerable amount of data on hygienic and microbiological parameters that have been collected from natural pools throughout Europe. 

In the afternoon we visited a natural swimming pond built by Anglo Swimming Ponds on the site of Capel Manor College, and continued informal discussions with each other on a variety of topics, meeting more formally later for a Q&A session.

It was a very successful start to this new, more organised, phase of the natural swimming pool industry in the UK, and we look forward to building on this at future events.

8th June 2010
 

The British Association for Natural Swimming Pools (BANSP) was founded on 8th June 2010 at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.