Colleen Klaasse, Fish Hoek
I'm an elderly member at Virgin Active in Sun Valley who only does aqua aerobics twice a week.
At the beginning of the month, the new manager, Joninho van Gee, sent out a notice to say that from now on only 30 people would be allowed to participate so that one of the four lanes in the pool is open to swimmers.
Only two swimmers could be accommodated while at least six aqua people would be turned away right now, but as the weather warms, it is closer to 16 as we often have classes in summer with 50.
This makes no sense at all as apart from a Monday and Friday there is only one class per day. So enforcing this rule means that the elderly who are the predominant participants would be turned away.
Everyone knows the pool is used by aqua classes for 45 minutes in the morning, and thus swimmers avoid that time slot. It's been this way for a number of years. So why upset a system that works?
• Virgin Active’s Jacqui Walter responds: Virgin Active would love to have the opportunity to engage with members who raise concerns so we are happy to reach out directly to the aqua ladies, and we will arrange that the club manager engages with them after each class, in order to ensure that they fully understand the reasoning as to why we are undergoing some changes.
Virgin Active has made, and will continue to make, enhancements across all our clubs in order to offer all our members the very best experience.
One of these exciting changes is the launch of our new app. The app enables all our members to book online, and we are therefore able to manage capacity in each class, always ensuring the safety of all our members.
We are excited to announce that at Sun Valley Virgin Active we have reviewed our timetable and aligned these with access stats for all members understanding everyone’s needs a little better.
It has shown that there are members that wish to do more aqua classes, and we therefore are introducing additional morning classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
We do, however, also need to take our swimmers into consideration and therefore do need to manage the capacity in our aqua classes in order to allow all members to benefit from using the pool.