A shortage of swimming teachers could scupper plans to get North Warwickshire's young children proficient in the pool.

Lockdown has meant lessons have been put on hold at schools across the district and now there are concerns that pupils will struggle to make up lost ground.

Cllr Margaret Bell (Con, Hartshill) told this week's meeting of North Warwickshire Borough Council's community and environment board: "Swimming has not been available recently because of lockdown restrictions and I am very concerned about school swimming and the fact that primary schools have one or two year groups that have lessons in normal times.

"We are going to have children who will have missed their opportunity to go swimming with the school and to learn to swim. I am a little concerned about what's going to happen to those children.

"It is possible that the schools might try and double up on their numbers to catch up with these youngsters while they are still in their schools but how can we help and can we respond if they want to increase their numbers?"

Simon Powell, the council's director of leisure and community development, said everything would be done to try and get the lessons back on track.

He told the meeting: "We have staff at the leisure complex who are in close communication with schools across the borough in terms of their intentions to return into a school swimming programme. The vast majority are certainly not going to respond until September/October at the earliest and for a significant number it will be the following January.

"What we are going to have to do is take account of what the schools are intending to do and then marry that up with available waterspace and also the number of qualified swimming teachers. For a number of years now we have had quite a significant difficulty in recruiting and holding on to trained swimming teachers – it didn't use to be that way but it has been of late.

"We will do everything we can to accommodate their needs when they return to the pool."

Earlier in the meeting councillors approved plans to close their leisure facilities for longer than usual over the festive period.

A report explained that with Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day all falling on a weekend, the bank holidays have been scheduled for Monday 27 December, Tuesday 28 December and Monday 3 January when the centres will also be closed.