If you’ve been searching for information about SwimMark accreditation, you’re not alone. For years, SwimMark was Swim England’s quality mark for swimming clubs, a badge that showed your club met certain standards around governance, safeguarding, and coaching.
But SwimMark is no longer the framework clubs should be focusing on.
In December 2022, Swim England launched the Club Health Tracker, a modern replacement that’s less about tick-box accreditation and more about continuous improvement. If you’re running a swim club in 2026, this is what you need to understand.
What Happened to SwimMark?
SwimMark was retired and replaced by the Club Health Tracker. While SwimMark was a binary pass/fail accreditation (you either had it or you didn’t), the new tracker takes a different approach: it’s a self-assessment tool that helps clubs benchmark themselves against others and identify where to focus their development efforts.
The shift reflects a broader change in how Swim England supports clubs. Instead of chasing a quality mark, clubs now get ongoing visibility into their strengths and weaknesses across six core areas.
What is the Club Health Tracker?
The Club Health Tracker is an online platform (delivered by Sporting Insights) that helps aquatic clubs assess and improve their operations. It’s mandatory for all Swim England affiliated clubs to complete annually.
Here’s how it works:
- Self-assessment survey: Once a year, each discipline within your club (swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming) completes a survey covering six development areas.
- Benchmarking results: Your scores are compared to regional and national averages, showing you where you’re strong and where you need work.
- Tailored support: The tracker provides specific resources and recommendations based on your results.
- Ongoing monitoring: Swim England uses the aggregated data to understand what support clubs need at a national level.
The Six Core Areas
The tracker assesses clubs across these six areas:
1. Coaching and Teaching
Quality and qualifications of your coaching team, coach development, retention strategies, and the coaching environment you provide.
2. Financial Management
Budgeting, financial planning, reserves, payment collection processes, and financial transparency.
3. Pool Operator Relationships
Your relationship with the facility you use, negotiation of pool time, communication quality, and understanding of mutual responsibilities.
4. Governance and Standards
Committee structure, role definitions, policies (safeguarding, code of conduct, complaints), AGM compliance, and record-keeping.
5. Growth
Membership numbers, retention rates, waiting lists, recruitment strategies, and your approach to trials and taster sessions.
6. Volunteers
Volunteer recruitment, training, recognition, burnout prevention, and succession planning for committee roles.
How to Access the Club Health Tracker
If your club is affiliated with Swim England:
- Check your email: Clubs receive login details directly from Swim England when the annual tracker opens.
- Each discipline completes separately: If you have a swimming section and a diving section, both complete their own assessments.
- Committee involvement: While the survey can be completed by one person, it’s far more valuable if your full committee discusses each area before responding.
What You’ll Learn
Once you submit your assessment, the tracker shows:
- Your scores in each of the six areas (typically out of 100).
- Regional benchmarks comparing you to clubs in your area.
- National benchmarks showing how you stack up across England.
- Specific recommendations for improvement based on low-scoring areas.
- Resources and templates to help you action those improvements.
For example, if your “Financial Management” score is 52 and the national average is 68, the tracker will flag this as an area requiring attention and point you to resources like:
- Direct Debit collection best practices
- Budget template spreadsheets
- Treasurer handover checklists
- Finance policy examples from high-performing clubs
Why This Matters for Your Club
The Club Health Tracker isn’t just bureaucracy. It’s designed to surface problems before they become crises.
Many clubs limp along with the same weaknesses for years: a single volunteer doing three roles, no succession plan, poor payment collection, strained pool relationships. The tracker forces you to look honestly at these areas and gives you a roadmap to fix them.
Practical benefits:
- Identify risks early: Weak governance or volunteer burnout often shows up in the data before it explodes at an AGM.
- Justify decisions: Benchmark data helps you make the case for change (“We’re scoring 15 points below average on coach retention — we need to invest in development”).
- Focus limited time: Volunteer committees have finite energy. The tracker tells you where to focus.
- Access targeted support: If your results show urgent issues, Swim England will reach out proactively to help.
Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)
Based on clubs that have gone through the tracker, here are the areas where most struggle:
Treating it as a tick-box exercise
The problem: Someone fills it out alone in 20 minutes without discussing with the committee.
The fix: Schedule a committee meeting specifically to go through the tracker together. The conversations you have while answering the questions are often more valuable than the final score.
Not actioning the results
The problem: You get your scores, feel briefly concerned about low areas, then forget about it.
The fix: At your next committee meeting after results come in, pick one area to focus on for the next quarter. Don’t try to fix everything at once.
Comparing yourself to the wrong clubs
The problem: Benchmarking against national averages can be misleading if you’re a 50-member club comparing yourself to 500-member clubs.
The fix: Look at regional benchmarks (more likely to be similar-sized clubs) and focus on year-on-year improvement, not absolute scores.
Ignoring discipline-specific issues
The problem: Completing one assessment for a multi-discipline club masks specific issues in smaller sections.
The fix: Make sure each discipline completes their own tracker. A thriving swimming section can hide a struggling diving section.
How Swimly Helps with Club Health Tracker Areas
While the Club Health Tracker is Swim England’s framework, tools like Swimly directly support improvement in several key areas:
- Financial Management: Automated Direct Debit collection, transparent billing, real-time financial reporting.
- Governance and Standards: Built-in Wavepower compliance tracking, DBS renewal alerts, digital audit trails.
- Volunteers: Reduced admin burden (less time chasing subs means more time coaching), clear role handovers with digital records.
- Growth: Streamlined trials process, waiting list management, parent self-service registration.
The tracker identifies what needs fixing. Modern club management software helps you actually fix it.
What to Do Next
If your club hasn’t completed the Club Health Tracker for 2026 yet:
- Find your login email from Swim England (search your committee inbox for “Club Health Tracker”).
- Schedule a committee session to complete it together (allow 60-90 minutes).
- Be honest in your answers — the data is confidential and used to help you, not judge you.
- Book a follow-up meeting one week after results come in to discuss action points.
- Pick one area to improve this quarter, not six.
If you’re a new committee member wondering “What’s the equivalent of SwimMark now?” — this is it. The Club Health Tracker is the quality framework your club should be engaging with in 2026.
Looking for tools to help improve your Club Health Tracker scores? Join the Swimly waitlist to learn how modern club management software can reduce admin burden, improve financial management, and support your volunteer committee.
Keep your club healthy. Swimly supports Club Health Tracker requirements with compliance tracking, membership management, and committee reporting.
Stay compliant without the paperwork. Swimly helps clubs manage Wavepower compliance alongside membership and billing. Clubs running lessons can also use our swim school management tools. See our pricing or compare with SwimClub Manager.