As part of its long term strategy for London 2012 and beyond, British Swimming has established five Intensive Training Centres (ITCs) designed to provide athletes with a world class, fully integrated training programme at a single location. The 50m pool centres chosen as ITCs were subject to a rigorous selection process to ensure that they could provide the best possible facilities, services and environment for the athletes.

Each ITC provides athletes with a fully integrated daily training environment which includes 25 hours of dedicated pool time training per week, generally comprising two sessions daily over six days per week. At least 60% of water time is allocated to long course training. This is complemented by a range of land conditioning options within the centre.

A full range of swimming-specific sports science support and medical services are provided to all athletes. The sports science and sports medicine programmes are an integral part of the daily training environment and are focused on performance improvement, and each one is driven by a lead specialist.