The Hackney Gazette reports: Orthodox Jewish children are missing out on exercise due to lack of appropriate swimming facilities, according to Hackney’s Jewish community.

The Charedi community, which requires separate swimming space due to religious restrictions, has petitioned the Town Hall to open the Clissold leisure centre pool on Sunday evenings for their private use.

Their petition with 377 names was presented to Hackney Council by Cllr Joseph Stauber, who said: “The children in the community cannot access water sports through their school, unlike mainstream schools, due to the requirement of religious and secular studies. “So they would benefit most from Sunday evening sessions.”

Rabbi Herschel Gluck from Stoke Newington’s Walford Road Synagogue, pointed out that separate swimming is a requirement not just of the Charedi community, but often of women and also Muslim men.

“Everyone pays council tax,” he said. “Therefore everyone irrespective of who they are should have equal access to public amenities.”

Pool time is available to Charedi children in Stamford Hill through the North London Jewish youth club which hires specific time slots during opening times. The club is allocated 23-and-a-half hours of separate pool time a week at Clissold and at Kings Hall leisure centres, programmed around religious requirements which prohibit activity on the Jewish Sabbath, Friday evenings and Saturdays.

But the club failed last August to get Clissold pool open on Sundays outside normal hours after its application for a grant from a Government youth programme aimed at preventing ‘social exclusion’ was turned down.

(HG)