15/04/2026

Chris shares his #IStartedAsaLifeguard story, from memories of mucking in at the Yarborough Leisure Centre to becoming National Standards and Compliance Director at GLL, the UK’s largest operator of swimming pools.

“I owe my career, in the most unlikely and circuitous way, to the Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS UK). I gained my first Bronze Medallion back in 1982 - forty‑four years ago now - which seems impossible because I still occasionally forget where I’ve put my glasses and can’t quite reconcile that with having lived long enough to accumulate four decades of anything. Back then, in the early 80’s, we were still practising Holger Nielson resuscitation method (look it up) and mechanically aspirating unfortunate people with the Stephenson Minuteman Resuscitator. 

I should say straight away, though, that I didn’t actually start as a lifeguard. I was, in fact, far too young for the Council rules. My glamorous entry into the leisure industry began in the Basket Room at Yarborough Leisure Centre in Lincoln - or “Basketry”, as it was then known, which made it sound like a delightful rural craft involving reeds, thatched roofs, and kindly grandmothers. It was not.

For younger readers - or indeed anyone blessed enough never to have encountered this system - the Basket Room involved handing over all your worldly possessions (clothes, wallet, watch, car keys, dignity) stuffed into a brightly coloured wire basket, usually rusting with sharp edges around the base. In exchange, you received a coloured elastic band, an item that doubled, quite superbly, as a catapult for firing at schoolmates. How public leisure centres ever functioned without being classified as danger zones remains one of life’s great mysteries, and probably why the HSE invented Risk Assessments.

Among my other vital duties was tending to the footbaths. This meant filling them to the brim and tipping in a hearty slosh of WESCODYNE, an iodine-based sanitiser apparently designed for the food industry and, somewhat alarmingly, rabbit cages. Still, no one ever got foot rot under my watch, and this was in an era before COSHH regulations existed to spoil everybody’s fun.

By 1985, I extricated myself from the baskets and became a ‘Pool Attendant’, which sounds like something out of a 1950s training film and probably was. Over the years, the title has shifted from Lifeguard to Leisure Attendant to Recreation Assistant, and so on. But truth be told, Pool Attendant may not have been far off the mark - although that’s a thought for later.

From there, I moved into the plant room, embarking on a ten-year, occasionally surreal apprenticeship. In those days, boilers were vast, lumps of iron tended by tattooed men who all seemed to have served in the Navy and consumed tea in industrial quantities. Saturdays were dominated by fry-ups of monumental scale. Back then, plant rooms were also usually adorned with a sofa; clearly discarded by someone’s granny to provide a convenient place to have a smoke/sleep after lunch.

Being young and keen, I mucked in with everything: digging out filters, knocking out gaskets, repacking pump glands - all the glamorous tasks that make parents everywhere wonder why they encouraged their children to get a job.

Forty years on, I am the National Standards and Compliance Director at GLL, the UK’s largest operator of swimming pools. I’ve travelled the well-worn path: Duty Manager, General Manager, Partnership Manager, Head of Operations. I’ve worked across four local authorities before spending the last 27 years with GLL, roughly the same amount of time it takes to fully understand breakpoint chlorination. (I still nod sagely, making appreciative noises when some plant fanatic is talking to me about the problems encountered by Nephelometric Turbidity Units).

My role now ranges far beyond pools. This year, for example, I’m helping implement the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act across 300 or so leisure and library facilities and fending off the seemingly ever-increasing pressures on our business, whether they be the price of gas or the creation of a new regulatory authority. How the industry has changed.

GLL has been a remarkable organisation to grow up with. I’ve watched the renaissance of Lidos, the birth of trampoline parks and the demise of the squash court, worked on both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympic Games and had the privilege of influencing industry standards with RLSS UK, ukactive, and the British Standards Institution.

And here’s the thing: every one of those foundation jobs - Lifeguard, Trainer Assessor, Swimming Teacher, Basket Room Custodian, and accidental Rabbit Cage Sanitiser - has proved useful. They’re the small stepping stones that stay with you forever.

So, fast forward to 2026, and I'm back with RLSS UK again, this time developing the latest industry standards for swimming pool supervision technology and the safe operation of pool inflatables, amongst other things. But should that really be lifeguard? Would Pool Assistant be a more appropriate title for the modern age - people who are armed with the latest Artificial Intelligence, who are there to help, influence, and attend to your every aquatic need and not just come to your aid when you are in distress or need your life guarded?

I’m also immensely proud to be back at Yarborough Leisure Centre in Lincoln, where it all began, one of the 65+ partners that GLL work with across the UK.

Regrettably. the footbaths have gone.”

Train to be a lifeguard

Careers with GLL