Equality and diversity for Swim England clubs

Swim England is committed to equality and diversity in all its functions. This includes working with our partners, as well as our affiliated clubs and their members. As part of our 10 year strategy, Access Aquatics, we want to make our sports and activities accessible, inclusive and welcoming for everyone.

To help you honour the practices and principles of equality and diversity we have brought together guidance, both internal and external. You can access this below:

Our Equality and Diversity Policy

Firstly we advise affiliated clubs to read our Equality and Diversity Policy. This can be found on our Inclusion Hub.

Inclusive Club Guide

This guide has been designed to support clubs in making your environment more inclusive for all of your members. As a ‘live’ document we are committed to updating it as new resources and support become available. Whilst many of the documents will be useful for clubs, this guide is not exclusively applicable to them. We are sure that our Regions and Counties will also find the information useful in their journey to become more inclusive. Please download our guide here.

Please also see some immediate resources as indicated below.

Disability

Swimming is a fully inclusive activity. We encourage all clubs to provide the disability community with greater opportunities to improve their swimming and realise their potential. We have included a summary of some of the resources clubs can utilise below.

LGBT

Swim England is responsible for regulation within its sports. These are gender-affected sports as defined by legislation, and we expect clubs to abide by our rules.

This is because physical strength, stamina or physique of average persons of one sex would put them at a disadvantage to average persons of the other sex.

We updated our policy on trans and non-binary competitors in April 2023 which you can view here. This was to ensure equal and fair competition in the sports, and to ensure the safety of competitors.

Swim England Inclusion Hub

For more information on the work Swim England will be doing across the areas of equality, diversity and inclusion, visit our Inclusion hub.