Important information/Frequently asked questions

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Accepted methods of payment

Preferably term fees can be made via BACS (Bank transfer payments) but they can be paid contactless at the pool if you prefer.  

Our bank details are:

Dolphin Swim School (business account)

52-10-40

15667278

*Please use your child’s name, swimming lesson day/time as a reference.

Unfortunately, we are unable to allow observation of lessons on the poolside as we don't have a suitable viewing area.  Once your children are on the poolside, parents/guardians are required to leave the building and wait in a vehicle or outside the changing rooms until the lesson ends and parents are called back into the building for pickup.

The girls changing room is located at the front of the building nearest the car park while the boys changing room is at the rear of the building.  The code to gain access will be sent to you in your welcome email.

In accordance with good safeguarding practice, If your swimmer is under 8 years old (3-7) then they must go in via the changing room appropriate to the person that brings them.  If your swimmer is 8 years or older then they must use the appropriate changing room suitable for them.  For example, a female parent/guardian may assist her five-year-old son to dress in the girls’ changing area but cannot accompany her nine-year-old son into the boys’ changing area.

Swimmers need to come beach ready meaning bathers under clothes to allow for an efficient handover.  For safeguarding and hygiene reasons we must request that all swimmers wear the appropriate swimwear. While not mandatory, it would be preferred if girls wear a one-piece swimming suit as opposed to bikinis and boys wear trunks or small shorts as opposed to long baggy shorts.  Swimming in underwear is not permitted. Children arriving to lessons in underwear may be turned away from their lesson.

Due to cameras being on mobile phones, we ask all parents not to use their phones in the changing facilities and to vacate the changing facilities if they are not needed to wait in the changing rooms due to safeguarding of our swimmers.

The taking of photographs and the recording of videos is only permitted with the authorisation of Dolphin Swim School Caerphilly Ltd team members. This is generally restricted to controlled conditions with the agreement of all participants.

To ensure that all children are given the best opportunity to succeed and to keep them safe, we ask that you inform us of all medical conditions a child may have (including serious historic ones such as heart operations, leukaemia or epilepsy) as well as learning difficulties including autism, hearing impairments, dyspraxia or ADD/ADHD.

If your child requires medication such as an asthma pump or adrenaline, it is your responsibility to ensure that it is brought on to the pool side by the child and given to either the teacher or the lifeguard.  Please ensure that it is stored in a waterproof container and the lid is marked with “EMERGENCY BOX” and with your child’s name on it. If your child suffers from athlete’s foot or a verruca, we would ask that you supply your child with an aqua sock for the duration of the lesson.

As there are many users of the pool including school children and other swimming clubs/schools all items are left at the pool these will be taken to the school reception.  Items can be collected from pupil reception Monday - Friday between 8:00am and 3:00pm.  The telephone number for St Martins comprehensive school is 02920 858050

Our courses run in line with the school terms and thus vary in duration. As a rule of thumb if your child has been in school that week we are also open for lessons. 

Please note that swimming lessons can only be booked in complete courses and you automatically enrol on the next course. Payments for courses must be paid promptly otherwise your child may be refused entry into their lesson.

All swimmers must re-enrol by the dates specified on your enrollment notification. Failure to do this could lead to your child’s place being offered to somebody else. Please contact us for more information or if you are not able to enrol by the specified dates.

Telephone - SMS text message will be sent for brief messages that are both for sole and bulk use.

Email - Please ensure you keep us up to date with your current email address and ensure you mark us as a safe sender so our emails do not end up in your junk mail, this is to ensure you don’t miss any important information from us. 

St Martins school is a non smoking site. Any parents/guardians who do wish to smoke must leave the site before smoking. This includes the use of e-cigarettes.

Should Dolphin Swim School Caerphilly need to cancel a lesson, we will endeavour to inform all parents/guardians using the contact details provided. 

If your contact details change please let us know so that we can update our details held for you. 

For any cancelled lessons we will apply a credit onto your account for the lessons missed.  Refunds can be requested by contacting us directly.  

The children will work towards the objectives of the award scheme set out by the Swimming Teachers association or the Swim England Scheme (we work with both). The teachers will mark the children’s performance as either "Fair", "Good" or "Pass" and when all objectives have been completed a handful of times with confidence the children will be given badge slips to take with them so that you can purchase a badge and a certificate if you like. We will then move the child over to the next badge, passing a badge does not always mean moving classes as long as the children are progressing at a similar rate to their piers but sometime we will suggest a change of class to better serve the needs of the child.

When we send notification of the new course fees being due we will ask that you let us know if you no longer want to keep your space, we ask that you do this promptly so that we can offer your space to a child on the waiting list

We politely ask that parents/guardians use their good sense in judgement when sending children to swimming lessons if they have been ill. Children should not participate in swimming activities if they have suffered from sickness or diarrhoea within the previous 48 hours. If you are unsure as to whether your child is well enough to swim, please do not hesitate to contact us. Refunds/credits of individual lessons missed due to illness/sickness/holidays etc are not available.  If your child suffers a significant sickness/injury that prevents them attending the lessons we will discuss those instances on a case by case basis.

Any behaviour which can be perceived as threatening or abusive towards any member of our staff or member of the public will not be tolerated. Anyone breaking this rule may no longer be welcome. Refunds will not be issued.

The information provided by you to us will only be used for the purposes of processing and administering the swim school. No information is sold or passed to any third parties without your explicit consent. The information you provide us (name, contact details, medical conditions etc.) is held securely and only accessible to those who need access to it.

Some information will be transferred to third parties to allow us to process your enrolments. This includes but is not limited to our Booking System Provider, the companies who send out our text messages/emails etc, the companies who provide our storage and email systems or the organisations we work with to ensure compliance with all regional laws (e.g. our accountants, system administrators and HR providers).

Only information which is relevant to each organisation will be transferred. For example our HR and Accountants will not receive information about swimmers personal details.

All of these companies have been thoroughly vetted and are fully compliant with the regulations around the GDPR and if outside of the EU hold the appropriate compliance certification to allow us to work with them.

The processing and storage of all data is entirely optional to all parents, guardians and swimmers, however, without the consent for us to store and process the information we will be unable to accept you into our swim school.