THE following letter has been sent by Paula Mossman to Mrs Jill Mayer, Deputy Head of Paid Services at Mid Devon District Council and signed by 24 local people:

WE the undersigned are all 60plus Zest members who who use Lords Meadow Leisure Centre in Crediton on a regular basis.

Most of us have been members for many years and have used and valued the facilities at Lords Meadow over this time.

We are, however, dismayed and alarmed at the huge increase in annual membership fees for 60+ Zest members being imposed as of April 2016 and wish to voice our concerns listed below.

1. 2015/16 fees for 60+ Zest memberships ranged from £200 to £240 per annum paid annually. The new fee structure of £302 plus represents over a 50 per cent hike in charges for members who only use the wet side facilities, who up until April 2016 have paid £200 pa, and a lesser but still unacceptably large increase for others.

Whilst we appreciate that Mid Devon’s Government subsidy for older people has been cut, what justification can there possibly be for putting up fees by such an enormous amount in a very low inflation economic period when Government pensions are rising by a maximum of £4 per week.

2. 60+ Zest members largely use Lords Meadow during hours when people who are working cannot use the facilities. During these off-peak hours the Centre clientele is mainly older people and parents with young children. Without the older members the facilities would be lying idle or severely underutilised much of this time.

The coffee shop would then suffer due to lower numbers of people in the Centre and could well become uneconomic for the current management to retain.

3. The new fee structure means that people are forced into paying for facilities they don’t, and in many cases cannot, use due to health issues. This applies to some of the undersigned, who for health reasons can only use the wet side facilities.

4. During weeks when there are Monday Bank Holidays, classes such as yoga and aqua aerobics are cancelled. At Christmas all such classes are regularly cancelled for a two-week period.

For 60+ members who use the Leisure Centre primarily to access these classes (as can be determined from your computer system) we are paying a regular fee for non-existent facilities in those weeks.

We feel a discount should be applied to membership, whether it is paid monthly or annually, to take this into account.

5. For many years the Leisure Centre has provided no adequate cover for the absence or illness of the aqua aerobics teacher. This has meant the occasional cancellation of classes or the provision of a teacher who is inadequately trained and not qualified. Again no discount has been offered when this has happened.

6. Customers were not consulted before this new fee structure was applied. About 15 months or more ago Lee Chester, at that time Manager of Lords Meadow, advertised widely in the Centre for regular users to join a users panel.

This panel was to liaise with the Management and bring the concerns and ideas of Centre users to them for consideration. The purpose of this was presumably to improve the Centre and also communications between the management and the Centre users.

Paula Mossman, signature below, was personally approached by Lee Chester regarding this. She applied to join the panel. She received an application form, filled it in and sent it back. She heard nothing more, despite there being an application deadline, until she emailed Lee Chester again many weeks later.

She was told that he was extending the deadline due to work pressures. Six months later she approached him again to be told he was too busy at the time.

It had been postponed until he had time to deal with it properly. It has never happened and so the opportunity for regular users of the Leisure Centre to put these and other points has never been given despite being promised.

What a shambles. Had there been the opportunity to debate these price increases before they were so summarily imposed this letter would not have been necessary and the current anger and disquiet being felt among 60+ Zest members could have been diffused before it occurred.

7. This massive increase in 60+ Zest prices is a direct penalisation of older people who do their best to stay fit and healthy by joining the Leisure Centre and using it regularly.

As older people we are continually being encouraged by the Government to take responsibility for our own health. However now we are being hit with a massive price hike for doing just that, which Mid Devon are blaming on the Government. What an irony!

8. Many of the 60+ Zest members are not wealthy pensioners and are in fact on fixed incomes some of which are only slightly above the level at which pension credit can be applied for.

To find an extra £100 a year plus for Leisure Centre membership, even if paid monthly, is not feasible for them. Some are already looking elsewhere for alternatives such as at Okehampton.

The 60+ Zest membership of Lords Meadow, and indeed Mid Devon Leisure facilities as a whole, may well shrink significantly as a result of the current level of disquiet this is causing.

If this happens the price increase will have been entirely counter-productive and may in fact cause income from 60+ memberships to decrease overall.

9. Some 60+ Zest members volunteered to pay our annual renewal up to six or seven months in advance during March 2016 in order to maintain the current prices. We have been told that there was a window of opportunity for people whose renewals are due until the end of June 2016 to do just this.

However this is not available for the rest of us. How is this fair and just? Just because of an accident about when we happened to first take out a membership we are not allowed the opportunity to do the same. This would appear to us as indiscriminate discrimination.

10. If we are to be expected to pay this huge increase in costs why is our membership being limited to off-peak hours during 2016/17? Surely we should be permitted to use classes and facilities during all opening hours as do other users.

11. Finally we come to the maintenance and cleaning of Lords Meadow Leisure Centre which we currently consider to be very substandard. If we are to be expected to pay this new rate for membership surely we should also be provided with:

• adequate HOT water in all the shower facilities

• properly cleaned floors both wet side and dry side that are free of mud and chewing gum

• clean walls and benches in the changing areas and cubicles including all the corners and between the struts of the benches

• adequate supplies of toilet paper at all times

• lighting that does not have blown bulbs for weeks on end

• management staff and contractors who cover their outdoor shoes when walking poolside.

All these areas are currently examples of maintenance and due consideration for the end user that are regularly overlooked or ignored. Despite past complaints from some of the undersigned in 2010, which caused some improvement at the time, they are once again slipping on a regular basis.

To summarise, we the undersigned, as a representative section of the 60+ Zest membership of Lords Meadow Leisure Centre, would like Mid Devon to:

• reconsider this price increase and reduce it to a level commensurate with current inflation and pension increases

• reinstate a sliding scale of charges according to usage, as was in place in 2015/16,

• allow all current 60+ Zest members the opportunity to renew their next years’ subscription at 2015/16 prices

• improve maintenance, cleanliness and hygiene especially in wet side showers and changing areas

• put in place a user panel to work with the Management on improving the Centre from a user perspective.

We are copying this letter to our MP Mel Stride, to local Mid Devon District councillors Nick Way, Judi Binks and Martin Binks, to the Crediton Courier and to a number of local GPs.