Cridders Swim School will be receiving their Amateur Swimming Association’s (ASA) Aquamark accreditation from The Bill’s Alex Walkinshaw on the 31st March.

Walkinshaw, who plays Smithy in the ITV drama, will be at the school in Upminster from 11.45 am onwards to present the school with their accreditation and to meet and greet children and their parents. Over 50 children will be present throughout the day and will be taking part in a ‘fun splash’ session in celebration of the school’s achievement.

The ASA is the national governing body for swimming and Aquamark is its quality seal of approval for swimming lesson providers. It is an original and unique programme, designed specifically to help organisations providing swimming programmes to improve and enhance their service.

Comprising of four modules, operators are assessed on areas such as Programme Operation, Staffing, Customer Relations and Policy and Strategy. To achieve top-level accreditation, premier status, then a centre must pass all four criteria and to achieve approved status the centre must pass two of the four criteria.

Cridders is the first swim school in London and only the third in the country to achieve Aquamark premier status. The swim school started the process for examination in late 2004 and was awarded the mark in November 2006.

Parents can be assured that schools that have achieved Aquamark status have been subjected to external scrutiny from experts within the field.

Cridders Swim School founder and Head Coach Trevor Cridland is delighted to achieve the top-level accreditation and hopes other schools in the area will follow suit.

“The school was established in September 2001,” he said. “I set up the school to serve working parents. Both my wife and I are working parents and no one in our area catered for us and our children.”

“It was a lot of hard work to achieve the accreditation, and we are hoping that by raising the standards of our swimming provision other schools in the area will too. We are without doubt a better school after all of our hard work.”

Business Manager for the London Region Jo Honey believes the school has deserved the accreditation after all of their hard work.

“This school has worked extremely hard to achieve their Aquamark accreditation,” she said. “The assessor noted that their swimming programmes were excellent and was very impressed with the school as a whole. This award presentation is a great way of recognising the school’s hard work.”

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Members of the press welcome to attend: Cridders Swim School, St Mary’s Lane, Upminster at 11:45am onwards. 

For more information contact ASA Media Assistant Gemma Field on 01509 632262, 07917 726431 or email gemma.field@swimming.org

The Amateur Swimming Association is the English National Governing Body for Swimming, Diving, Water Polo, Open Water, and Synchronised Swimming. It organises competition throughout England, establishes the Laws of the Sport and operates comprehensive certification and education programmes for Teachers, Coaches and Officials as well as its renowned Learn To Swim Awards scheme. The ASA supports 1,600 affiliated swimming clubs through a National/Regional/County structure. The ASA aims to ensure everybody has an opportunity to learn to swim.

The Kellogg’s ASA Awards Scheme is the most successful awards scheme in British sport and issues around two million awards every year to swimmers all around the world.

For more information about ASA Awards please see www.swimming.org