23/3/2007

Letters

Leisure centre is made dirty by people who use it

There can be no doubt that some parts of the Arena Leisure Centre at Camberley are sometimes not as clean as they should be (News, March 16). This is despite the undoubted existence of the dedicated cleaning team to which the borough council spokesman proudly refers. As a regular attender at the Arena, I am also aware that they have all the protocols and procedures necessary to ensure an efficient and smooth running operation. So what is the problem?

If the place is regularly cleaned, then becomes dirty, there can only be one category of culprit — the users of the place, the public. It is not going to be the staff who deposit messes and clods of dirt in the changing rooms, so it has to be the customers.

But it should be the staff who watch out for such abuses of the place and here, I am afraid, they fall down. All too often staff members effect not to notice abuses of the Arena’s rules because to do so might necessitate an unpleasant confrontation with a belligerent customer. The way to improve the general cleanliness is to inject some backbone into the staff who man the place and oversee the customers.

But what of Cllr Pat Pearce’s observation that the Arena must be clean because “they wouldn’t go there if it was disgusting”? One can only say ‘join the real world councillor’. People patronise the Arena not because it is a model of cleanliness but because it is the only reasonably-priced fitness venue in the area.

We could flog over to Bracknell or Farnborough — but we don’t have the time. We could nip over to Pennyhill Park — but we don’t have the money. So we are stuck with the Arena — with its muck and overcrowding.

Another of Cllr Pearce’s comments was that the Arena has “one of the highest footfalls in the country”. Quite so, councillor. Then why, may I ask, at the planning stage of the Atrium development were you not insisting that a leisure pool should be built into it to relieve the pressure on the massively-congested Arena?

Janet Long
Campbell Place
Frimley

First printed in: Aldershot News and Mail