The swimming pools at King Alfred will remain closed until Easter because of boiler issues.
The pools were first closed on Friday, January 6 when gremlins hit the pool’s heating control panels.
By Monday, leisure centre operator Freedom Leisure was emailing members to advise them they would be closed for at least a fortnight.
This afternoon, Brighton and Hove City Council tweeted that “major technical issues” meant the pools would not reopen until mid-April.
Darryl Keech, Brighton and Hove Area Manager for Freedom Leisure said: “We are very disappointed that we are not able to open the pool due to this technical failure.
“We would like to reassure customers that we are doing everything we can to repair the boiler system and its controls.
“This is so we can, as soon as possible, heat the water, re-open the pool and provide the service our customers and the residents of Brighton and Hove deserve.”
Freedom Leisure, which manages the centre on behalf of the council, will be contacting customers with options to suspend memberships and re-locate swimming lessons and will provide regular updates.
The gym, sports halls, studios and ballroom currently remain open.
The council said that due to its age, the King Alfred building is becoming increasing difficult to operate and maintain. The pools were previously briefly closed in October for technical issues.
Following this latest closure, investigations by specialist contactors had found significant problems which means major work must be carried out to replace the building controls and repair the associated boilers.
Freedom Leisure is working with council officers and contractors to complete the required works as soon as possible and to keep the facility open until a new replacement King Alfred/West Hub is delivered.
Plans to replace the ageing leisure centre have stalled in recent years after a developer pulled out of an ambitious scheme to build a new centre alongside hundreds of homes.
Crest Nicholson had been selected by Brighton and Hove City Council to redevelop the site in 2016, but rising building costs and uncertainties led it to abandon its plans in 2019.
Discussions around this are currently at an early stage, with a potential site for a new leisure centre not yet identified.
The council says it’s unlikely work on this will start until the end of next year at the earliest.
Someone needs to comment on this.
I happen to live nearby, and I was intending to take out a month long membership to improve my fitness, and because in summer I normally swim in the sea – but it is now the coldest time of the year for sea swimming.
So this closure is a personal disappointment for me.
But I also know that it doesn’t take months to repair a boiler.
So is this a boiler repair problem, or is it really an argument over who pays for the repairs – the council or the franchised contractor?
This story smells once again of an over active council PR department blaming technical issues – when really administrative or budget ineptitude are to blame.
And how convenient for them that they won’t need to pay to heat the pool over the winter months.
Will this pool ever re-open?
This city is really in a mess right now. But we are not helped by the cheerleading propaganda we are being fed.
I think its the high energy costs that are also a issue.
Typical council dosent want to spend any money as they want to knock it down for housing
If you look at the boilers, you will see that they are ancient and in a terrible state. The matter of a new pool has been going on for… fifty-four years.
So we’ve known since 2019 that we are not getting the new pool as part of the Crest Nicholson redevelopment of the site.
If they have also known the boilers are no longer fit for purpose then their recent breakdown has been a predictable event.
We’re now told the pool may remain shut until after Easter – and that presumably means the costs of a new boiler can be budgeted for in the next financial year.
Or will the pool never re-open?
Hopefully the staff are being given jobs elsewhere.