About 40 per cent of Australia’s ageing public swimming pools will be obsolete by 2030; a looming crisis compounded by climate change, increased demand and a rising drowning rate .

The cost to replace them? Eight billion dollars, including $2.7 billion in NSW and $3 billion in Victoria – and that doesn’t include the cost of building entirely new pools as the population grows.

“That’s scary,” Royal Life Saving NSW chief Michael Ilinsky told a meeting at NSW Parliament House on Friday, where he pitched modular prefabricated pools as a potential solution to cut costs.

Inspired by the NSW government’s pattern book of designs to fast-track low to medium density housing, the 130-year-old organisation has worked with global architects Cox Architecture on a pattern book of modular designs ca

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