COVID-19 Response

Retirement villages have been one of the key facilities that we are focusing on for Quality Pool. Amy Waller, Amotto Consultancy Ltd, has been working directly with a retirement village group to comply with the criteria and become Quality Pool accredited facilities.

Initial conversations highlighted the villages concerns around compliance of their pools across the portfolio. The interest in Quality Pool was that it would provide them with the confidence they required knowing their facilities were being operated to a benchmark and meeting criteria, which would be used by WorkSafe if there was to be an investigation.

Consistency across their portfolio was (and still is) a target across their operations. Providing a consistently maintained facility from site to site. Ultimately, they are working towards achieving Quality Pool accreditation and having new staff coming on board has helped drive this forward.

There were some challenges that they initially faced, included the following: • Water testing equipment – almost all sites had to upgrade their water testing kits to enable the required testing to be completed, as per NZS5826:2010. Most were using test strips or colour comparators. • Signage – safety signage was either not compliant or didn’t exist.

Majority of sites now have signage displayed – which is consistent across the portfolio. • Water treatment certificates – not many had these. They are in the process of working with Sarah Cresswell, Wai Skills, around a tailored water treatment course for retirement villages, rather than a Microbiological water testing – approximately half the sites comply with these requirements, and this is a work in progress to get the rest of the sites completing these tests monthly.

The above challenges are being worked through – some would be very close to complying with the above now – some are work in progress. It is promising that this group of retirement villages are close to becoming Quality Pool accredited.

Their Lead of Health and Safety is very keen to bring all their sites up to a ‘gold star’ standard. The aim is to ensure they are meeting best practice and standards to provide safer aquatic environments for their residents and whānau.