Mark Green

Last updated 09:15, Saturday, 19 April 2008

It’s a moan, I’m afraid. Good old Allerdale have managed to get it wrong again. There are a host of issues I could take up, different topics in different towns – Cockermouth, Keswick and Workington – parking; shopping; planning...

This is a small, not so serious topic, but one that neatly sums up the muddle-headed, money-first attitude they seem to have.

It’s the fact that Keswick Leisure Pool has cold and cramped temporary changing rooms and it still charging full prices for entry.

It’s a great pool, with a bendy slide and a wave machine, always busy and with helpful staff, but...

The man on the desk warned us that the changing rooms were temporary and that it was up to us if we wanted to go ahead and pay.

The trouble with this is that it is difficult to turn round and tell a four and a six-year-old that no, although we’d driven all the way there and had already dressed them in swimming trucks to get in the water that much quicker, and although they could see the slide and the water through the doors and catch the chlorine in their nostrils, no, they couldn’t actually go in now.

So we paid. The ‘changing rooms’ seem to be shipping containers that may have transported bananas across the Atlantic or plastic garden gnomes from China, but are now filled with lockers leaving little room for manoeuvre. They’re warm, but separated from the pool area by a freezing and boot-muddied corridor.

I know the facility is run by Carlisle Leisure Ltd, but it is under contract to Allerdale, which should operate fairly, for and on behalf of – us, the taxpayer.

All councils are strapped for cash, we know this. But just a small, financially insignificant thing like a temporary reduction in fees could make a difference in how the authority and the area is viewed by visitors and even local tax payers. It’s an old-fashioned concept called customer service.