‘Shoddy’ leisure centre criticised as swimming pool riddled with ‘scum’

Freedom Leisure operates four centres across Fenland and a report was presented to the district council’s overview and scrutiny panel.

These include Manor Leisure Centre in Whittlesey, George Campbell Leisure Centre in March, Chatteris Leisure Centre and Hudson Leisure Centre in Wisbech.

Cllr Paul Hicks said: “You’ve got a spy in the camp here because I use the George Campbell five times a week.”

The independent councillor called the service “shoddy” and said “probably 50 per cent or more” of lockers don’t work – forcing swimmers to “take a chance” by leaving their belongings unsecured.

Paul Doyle, Freedom’s regional manager for Fenland, said: “That’s obviously within our power to do, I didn’t realise that was such an issue.

“As long as it’s a fairly simple mechanism, then it’s a fairly simple solution to replace that mechanism”.

Cllr Hicks continued: “Secondly, scum around the outside of the pool on the top.

“I’ve been swimming there for months and it hadn’t been done and somebody wrote ‘clean me’ in the muck.

“I reported this and it was done but I said, ‘is there a cleaning rota to do this?’ and they said, ‘no, we do it when we’ve got time’.”

Mr Doyle said there “absolutely should be a cleaning rota in place” but “if there was scum around the pool – clearly it’s not been done properly.

“Whoever was answering the question on the day was perhaps trying to detract from the fact that that’s not been done”.

Cllr Hicks also said a broken hand dryer still doesn’t work despite being reported “time and time again”, a toilet has a broken handle and a lock on a disabled bathroom doesn’t work.

Mr Doyle said: “It does sound like the front-line staff are not passing on information to a higher level enough so I think we need to not just improve our maintenance but also our communication.”

He said they would “usually be aware” of issues but that they weren’t aware of those raised.