Discouraging Children from Swimming – Plascrug Leisure Centre

We don’t take Morgan swimming quite as often as we should, but Cerdigion County Council don’t make it easy either.

Last time we took him to the pool at Plascrug leisure centre we were told that the children’s pool was a little cold. When we got in was was more than cold, it was absolutely freezing and there was no way anyone could stay in it so everyone had to use the large pool. This wasn’t much better and Morgan was only able to stay in the water for about 10 minutes before going blue. Needless to say we weren’t too pleased but the leisure centre didn’t seem too bothered about it and were still letting people in (and of course charging them) despite the fact that the pool was unusable.

We tried again on Monday as it was half term and there is supposed to be free swimming for children in the mornings. A good idea as this encourages children to get in the pool and of course gets their families into the pool as well. As far as I’m concerned this is just the sort of thing the council should be doing – no doubt getting people more active and therefore fitter would save money in the long term.

However, we turned up just before 11:30am only to be told (by a very grumpy girl on the desk) that we were too late for the free child swim and we had to pay full price for Morgan. We argued the point for a bit but in the end had to pay for him. It’s not the money that gets us, its the principle.  For a start we were on time – last entry for the free swim is apparently 11:30am and both the credit card receipt and the till receipt from the pool has a time stamp before 11:30 (only just admittedly but we did argue the point for a minute or so before actually paying). More important though is the fact that they should be encouraging people to go swimming, not making it difficult for them, even if it had been a few minutes past 11:30 surely they should let you in anyway, afterall we were only going there because of the offer of a free kids swim so they were getting the full price for two adults anyway.

Anna has e-mailed the council to moan about it, so we’ll see what they say.

4 Responses

  1. Avatar forComment Author Reg says:

    ah mate ceredigion council are so bad at some things, if you dont get joy from council man your next best is polite letter to cambrian news and western mail. that always rattle afew cages, oh and nuke em with a letter to your local lib dem mp

    hee hee

    • Avatar forComment Author Alan says:

      The e-mail seemed to do the trick… We’ve have a reply from the Centre Manager – Along with the promise of some complimentary free swim passes:

      I was disappointed to read your comments below. Firstly the issue on your recent visit concerning the free swim entry; I can understand your frustration of not being able to have a free child swim at so close to the 11:30am time. Our computer booking system does time out 30 minutes before the end of the session and the receptionists are not able to put it through after this time, and our holiday opening times do state this. However as you were so close to 11:30am our staff should have given you the free swims as it was literally seconds after the last entry. These swims could then have been manually recorded by us on the next days free swim session’

      With the huge number of customers we have on a regular basis we do need to have reasonable policies in place to enable consistent levels of service, however on this occasion I feel it should have been overridden manually due to it being so close to the time. If it had been 5 minutes or more I would expect all staff to go with the policy for consistency. I will speak to the all the reception staff and admin staff to ensure they are aware of the need to use common sense in relation to all our reception policies in future. Obviously this will not include any policies with a health and safety aspect.

      With regards an earlier visit where the water was cold I can only apologise and presume this was when we had boiler failure earlier this year and ended up with the pool being closed for a week whilst repairs were carried out.

      I hope this reassures you that your custom is appreciated and that your views are taken seriously by us, as a gesture of good will I will forward a few complimentary free swim passes to you in the post. If I can be of any further assistance or you require any further clarification on anything please contact me direct at the centre or via this e mail address.

  2. Avatar forComment Author Andrew says:

    CC do my head in far too often. We’ve found Mach pool to be good for kids, or the one at Clarach, although I don’t know what type of chlorine they use at Clarach, but it’s very smelly :-/

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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