Sunny Skyes Aquatics and Wellness Hub faces enforcement action from Gold Coast City Council
An award-winning Gold Coast learn-to-swim school is fighting for survival after being hit with a council shutdown order.
Gold Coast
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An award-winning Gold Coast swim school, whose students include kids with disabilities and nippers, faces being shut down by the city council after neighbours complained the facility is too noisy and parents are running over wildlife.
The Gold Coast City Council has launched enforcement action against Skye Bond’s Sunny Skyes Aquatics and Wellness Hub, claiming it’s operating illegally.
Ms Bond, who conducts community classes for the council’s popular ‘Active and Healthy’ program, has been forced to call in lawyers to mount an appeal as parents rally to save the school.
After teaching overseas and at other pools, the 25-year veteran swim teacher opened her home-based school last year at her acreage property on Monday Drive, Tallebudgera Valley.
She says she spent $1.2 million to buy the property after verbal assurances from the council that she could operate a home-based business.
But neighbours began complaining about noise, traffic and alleged wildlife deaths in the hinterland street, and the swim school – after being forced to shut down for several months at the height of COVID – was hit with a council closure order.
Ms Bond said she had been forced to spend thousands of dollars on noise and traffic reports and hire a lawyer to fight the order.
Almost 1400 people, including neighbours whose children attend the swim school, have signed a petition to save the facility and Ms Bond has also received letters of support from champion ironman Zane Holmes and Swim Australia which says her operation is award-winning and nationally recognised in helping prevent child drownings.
“It’s very sad and hard to fathom that the council seems to be doing everything in its power to shut us down when we’re teaching Gold Coast kids a skill that could save their lives,” she said.
“We have kids with autism, Asperger’s and anxiety who find it very difficult at the big commercial swim schools. This is a calming place for them.
“We have neighbours whose children learn to swim here. It’s ridiculous that we’ve had to go to these lengths because of complaints from a handful of neighbours.”
A leaflet from a disgruntled resident claims the swim school attracts up to 300 people a day – ‘strangers to you and me’ – and 140 extra cars.
“The (swim school) is inappropriate and is better suited to an industrial area – not in a rural residential area where it affects everyone residing here,” the flyer states.
But Ms Bond said she taught a maximum of five children at a time on weekdays and Saturday mornings, with no more than eight cars an hour, and ‘the birds make more noise than the kids’.
“There have been complaints that parents are killing wildlife, but I’ve been here 14 months and never seen a dead anything,” she said.
Ms Bond has had to lodge a development application for the swim school, with plans for an indoor pool especially for disabled students.
A preliminary appeal hearing will be held in Southport Planning and Environment Court next week.
Originally published as Sunny Skyes Aquatics and Wellness Hub faces enforcement action from Gold Coast City Council
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