Since our new Aqua Park was spotted being erected on Rivington Reservoir, we’ve had plenty of questions from visitors, families and the local community. Why has the Anderton Centre launched a paid attraction? How does an inflatable water park fit with our mission of outdoor education? And why does it cost £20 to take part?
These are fair questions, and we’re glad people are asking them. The answer says a great deal about outdoor education organisations like ours have to operate in 2026, and it gives us a good opportunity to explain more about how the Anderton Centre works behind the scenes.
We think transparency is far more useful than defensiveness, so rather than simply responding to individual comments, we wanted to set out the bigger picture. What follows is an honest look at the pressures facing outdoor education providers today, why financial sustainability matters just as much as our mission, and how a single Aqua Park ticket connects to work that most visitors never see, or even realise exists.
Outdoor Learning Has Changed
Running an outdoor education centre today looks very different to how it did a decade ago. Funding that organisations like ours could once rely on has become far harder to secure, while the cost of delivering safe, high quality outdoor activities has risen steadily.
Energy bills, insurance premiums, equipment inspections, instructor qualifications, ongoing maintenance and staffing all cost significantly more than they did ten, even five years ago. Add to that the lasting financial pressure many outdoor education providers are still feeling in the years since the pandemic, and it becomes clear that the traditional funding models many outdoor centres relied upon simply aren’t as dependable as they used to be.
Across the UK, outdoor learning organisations have had to rethink how they generate income. Diversifying revenue streams isn’t a departure from our mission, it’s what allows us to continue delivering that mission reliably, year after year. The Anderton Centre is no exception, and we’ve approached this challenge the same way many of our peer organisations have: by finding new ways to generate income that support, rather than compete with, our core educational work.
Grants and traditional funding sources still play a part in what we do, but relying on them alone is no longer a sustainable model for most outdoor education providers. Waiting lists for grant funding have lengthened, application processes have become more competitive, and the amounts on offer often haven’t kept pace with rising running costs. Generating our own income gives us far greater control over our future, and means we’re not left waiting on external decisions to know whether we can keep our doors open for the communities who rely on us.
We’ve Been Here Before
This isn’t a hypothetical risk for us. In 2018, the Anderton Centre came within weeks, if not days, of closing its doors for good. It was that close. What kept us open wasn’t a grant or a rescue package, it was our own staff, some of whom offered to keep working without pay simply to give the centre a fighting chance of surviving.
We’d barely had time to steady ourselves when the pandemic hit, and the years since have been a tough old slog. Public activity stopped overnight, school visits disappeared, and the same costs that never go away in winter kept mounting with no income coming in to cover them.
We’re not alone in this. News of outdoor centres closing their doors for good has become a regular occurrence across the UK, as sites that have introduced generations of young people to the outdoors quietly run out of road. It’s a sobering reminder of just how fragile these organisations can be, and it’s exactly why we’ve had to think differently about how we generate income.
Summer Supports Winter
One thing that often gets overlooked is that although summer is our busiest and most visible season, the Anderton Centre operates all year round. The buzz of school groups, family visits and activities on the water during the warmer months is only one part of what we do.
Winter brings a very different set of demands. Public activity naturally slows down, but our costs don’t. Heating and maintaining our buildings becomes more expensive. Boats, climbing walls and equipment need continual upkeep to stay safe and ready for use. Instructors undertake training and requalification. Equipment undergoes servicing and safety inspections. And a great deal of behind the scenes planning goes into preparing for the school residentials and community sessions that make up so much of our educational impact.
The income we generate during our busiest months, including through new attractions like the Aqua Park, helps sustain our operations throughout these quieter periods. It ensures that when spring arrives, we’re ready and able to welcome schools, community groups and families back through our doors without interruption. This is something many people simply haven’t considered when they look at a single ticket price in isolation, but it’s central to how we keep the Anderton Centre running as a year-round resource for our community.
Why an Aqua Park?
The Aqua Park isn’t there simply to ‘make money’. It’s part of a considered approach to diversifying how we generate income, so that we can continue to remove barriers to outdoor learning for the people who need it most.
Introducing an attraction like this allows us to bring in new visitors who might not otherwise have discovered the reservoir or the wider work of the Anderton Centre. It encourages families to spend a day outdoors together, often for the first time in a long while. It generates unrestricted income that we can invest back into our facilities. And, most importantly, it helps fund the work that happens far beyond the inflatable itself.
Every Aqua Park ticket helps support the work that continues quietly in the background: subsidised places for young people who couldn’t otherwise afford outdoor experiences, community outreach programmes, and the maintenance of the site and equipment that every visitor, whether on a school residential or a family day out, ultimately benefits from.
There’s also a wider benefit that’s easy to overlook. Many of our Aqua Park visitors are experiencing Rivington Reservoir, and the Anderton Centre itself, for the very first time. Once they’ve had a taste of what the site offers, a good number go on to explore our other activities, from paddleboarding and sailing to climbing and archery, or return with their children’s school for a residential visit. In this way, the Aqua Park doesn’t just generate income directly, it also acts as an introduction to everything else the Anderton Centre provides, helping us build lasting relationships with families and schools across Lancashire, and beyond.
Why Does It Cost £20?
We understand that £20 is a genuine consideration for many families, and it’s a question we’re happy to answer directly.
The price reflects far more than simply an inflatable sitting on the water. It covers the presence of qualified lifeguards and instructors on site throughout the session, along with safety equipment and buoyancy aids for every participant. It includes ongoing water quality monitoring, dedicated rescue cover, and the regular inspections and maintenance needed to keep the equipment safe to use. It also contributes towards insurance, staffing and the customer facilities that make a visit comfortable and enjoyable from start to finish.
When compared with similar attractions across the region, our pricing sits very much in line with what’s typical for a supervised water based activity of this kind. We simply need to cover the genuine cost of running a safe and well managed attraction while still generating a contribution towards our wider mission.
Water Quality and Safety
We’ve also received a number of questions about blue-green algae at the reservoir, and we want to be completely transparent about this.
The existing warning signage around the reservoir remains in place, and the guidance we’ve received from United Utilities has not changed. Our activities only ever operate when conditions are deemed suitable, and we follow agreed monitoring procedures and operating guidelines at all times. Safety always comes before opening, without exception. If conditions aren’t right on a given day, sessions simply won’t run. We’d rather be clear and consistent about this than leave anyone to speculate, because the wellbeing of everyone who visits us matters more than any single day’s activity schedule.
It’s worth being clear about one other distinction here too. The advice discouraging unsupervised open water swimming at the reservoir, including the risk of cold water shock, relates to entering the water outside of a supervised activity. Both the Aqua Park and our recently reintroduced open water swimming sessions are a different setting entirely. Every session is run under the watch of qualified lifeguards and instructors, with buoyancy aids or wetsuits provided where appropriate and rescue cover in place throughout, so participants are supported and supervised from the moment they get in the water to the moment they get out.
Our Purpose Hasn’t Changed
The Aqua Park is new, but our purpose isn’t.
For decades, the Anderton Centre has existed to help people of all ages discover confidence, resilience and a lifelong connection with the outdoors, using Rivington Reservoir and the surrounding landscape as our classroom. Launching new activities like the Aqua Park isn’t about moving away from that purpose, it’s about protecting it for the future.
Every new income stream we introduce helps us continue welcoming schools, community groups, families and individuals for years to come, regardless of how funding landscapes shift or how costs continue to rise. Because ultimately, a sustainable organisation is one that can keep making a difference, season after season, year after year.
When you buy an Aqua Park ticket, you’re not just paying for an hour of bouncing, sliding and splashing about on the water, although we hope you have a brilliant time doing exactly that. You’re also playing a part in keeping a site open that very nearly closed its doors for good, and that continues to give thousands of young people their first real experience of the outdoors every year. It’s a good day out that quietly does a lot more than it looks like on the surface.
We hope this gives a clearer picture of how the Anderton Centre works, and why decisions like introducing the Aqua Park are made with financial sustainability and long term impact in mind, not short term profit. If you’ve visited the Aqua Park this summer, or you’re planning your first trip to Rivington Reservoir, we’d love to hear from you.
If you’d like to find out more about our work, book an activity, or discuss how your school or group could get involved, please get in touch with our team on 01257 484220 or by emailing info@andertoncentre.co.uk. You can also find out more about everything we offer, from the Aqua Park to school residentials and community programmes, at andertoncentre.co.uk.
We’d also love for you to follow and engage with us on our social media channels, where we regularly share updates from the centre, stories from our visitors, and news about upcoming activities. Every like, share and comment helps us reach more people who could benefit from what we offer, and every visit or piece of support helps us continue our work as an outdoor education provider in Lancashire.
The Anderton Centre has always been about more than a single day out. Whether that day involves an Aqua Park session, a climbing wall, a sailing lesson or a school residential, it all feeds back into the same purpose: helping people build confidence, resilience and a genuine connection with the outdoors, today and for generations to come.
To book your session on the Aqua Park, visit https://andertoncentre.cinolla.com/andertoncentre/course/aqua-park
