Jubilee swimming pool

Anonymous submitted on

Wednesday 13th March 2019

Complete

I bought a gym membership in October primarily to use the Jubilee pool. At the time I was working 9-5 on my masters project and thought that getting the discounted membership would be fine, this means not using the facilities between 4-8 pm which I accepted. After I bought the membership I then found out that the pool is booked every day by different groups from 8 pm. This effectively means that I cannot use the pool after 4 pm. The pool is also booked in the morning leaving not a large amount of time available. I emailed to ask for a partial or full refund of the membership as I didn't believe I would be able to use the facilities. I was told that I should use the pool in town instead, which would be at an extra expense to me given the price of the bus and the time it would take to get there and back. The bus does not go directly to the quays pool and having been there to see the pool water is freezing. 

I think that paying members should be informed clearly that this is the case before buying a membership. Or the option of a refund within a certain number of days. The Jubilee sports centre undoubtedly has a monopoly on gym and pool facilities and that this is being exploited.

Another idea would maybe be to have a separate pool membership to bypass the issue of not being able to swim between 4 and 8.

Answers

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Steve Gore submitted on

Thursday 30th May 2019

Complete

Hi Anonymous,

Thank you for your submission. I have spoken to the Assistant Manager of Sport and Wellbeing who has replied to me with this response:

"Thank you for the feedback about pool time. This year we took back some time on a Thursday evening from clubs to make sure that we are offering one-week day evening to members. On a Thursday you are able to swim up to 2100 as there are no clubs in at that time. We are aware that we have a very high demand for our pool and we do try and work with as many different groups as possible. We brought in the contract with Active Nation to give options to our members, so they could access an alternative pool if ours is busy. We continue to look at how we can change things to meet the needs of the wider community and if we give to one group we take from another.
We have considered having a membership that focused on specific areas of what we offer, due to the way that we are structured, and the costs associated with running the whole of Sport and Wellbeing this would not allow us to keep running."

As VP Sports I think that Sport and Wellbeing have missed this issue somewhat since the change to on-peak/off-peak time designations, due to the fact that a majority of club booked sessions happen in the pool between 8-10pm which have since become more valuable to FF members who have limited access to the pool. A good solution for this might be to move more Athletic Union club booked sessions forward into peak time, freeing up this time for casual users. I am leaving my role next month so will not be able to see this through, however please be assured that I will recommend this to my successor, Olivia.

Best wishes,

Steve Gore, VP Sports