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Report exposes filthy pool

Swimming pool a disgrace

HEALTH and safety inspectors found rusting changing rooms and stained toilet floors when they inspected one of Islington’s most popular swimming pools, the Tribune can reveal.
Files unearthed using new Freedom of Information rules show that an inspection found a series of hazards at the Archway Leisure Centre in Macdonald Road this summer.
Leisure operators Aquaterra said that problems unearthed during the investigation in August had been seen to or would be addressed in the next week as a priority.
But Labour councillors say the pool is being mismanaged and attempts by the Liberal Democrat council to throw money at the pool have failed.
The health and safety dossier for the pool revealed:
• Rusty changing rooms;
• Hazard tape strewn across broken facilities;
• Poor cleaning exposed by hair clogging up on the back of pipes;
• Leaking soap dispensers;
• Dirty floors;
• Fire exits blocked by swimming floats;
• Brown stains on the toilet floors.
The report, normally kept under lock and key at the Town Hall but reveaed following a Tribune Freedom of Information request, said: “The floor (in the disabled toilets) needs cleaning the large brown stain is still there in the drain line… The backs of women’s toilet doors need cleaning in dry and wet side – in the wet side there is hair along the backs of the pipes in the toilets.”
Labour group leader Catherine West said: “It (the pool) is always filthy – and it is down to the management. I investigated the expenditure and it wasn’t that money wasn’t being spent on the pool. It is just not being managed properly. They moved the women’s changing rooms around but its still dirty.”
Cllr West is among campaigners who believe a pool should be retained in Archway if the area’s large redevelopment goes ahead.
She said: “It is important for people in that area to have a pool – and it needs to be better managed.”
Senior Liberal Democrat councillor Laura Willoughby said: “If there is a problem with the pool, I will look into it but we have spent money on the pool.”
A spokeswoman for Aquaterra said: “The problems in the report have nearly all been addressed since the report was compiled.”



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