A £50,000 refurbishment of Saddleworth Pool has left some regular users of the Uppermill facility annoyed and underwhelmed.
The pool closed for two weeks to allow upgrade work of the plant room, and for cosmetic improvements and deep clean to take place.
Oldham Community Leisure (OCL) insist work was “successfully completed”.
However, readers contacted the Independent to complain about the standard of work.
A Grasscroft swimmer said: “I feel we have been short-changed with the recent refurbishment unless all the money and time were spent behind the scenes.
“The pool itself is now worse than before. All the stains on the tiles are all there but now this is added to by hard debris on the pool floor.
“This pool has never seen a deep clean. Someone has signed this off as being satisfactory.”
A fellow pool user from Delph added: “I understood there was to be a ‘deep clean’ of the pool.
“Sadly the results appear to have seen no improvement and rather that the situation has deteriorated.
“The ‘deep end’ has two rows of tiles which are ‘ochre’ stained.
“If they could not be cleaned then they should have been removed and replaced.
“In addition to that area, there are small particles drifting at the bottom of the pool.
“Many more tiles now have stains on them perhaps as a result of the maintenance work.
“The tiles on the walls ‘poolside’ have staining and the tiles around the pool also have stains.
“In the male changing room there are cracked tiles in the showers.
“On one wall there are 18 lockers. However only 11 fully work.
“So, from a swimmers perspective the situation appears no better and actually worse.”
A spokesperson for OCL said: “The site has been deep cleaned and the work behind the scenes successfully completed.
“We have, however, removed items during the closure and it has left some deep rust staining in the tank and poolside.
“We are having to engage with some other contractors who are looking at completing this work overnight so not impacting on customers any further.”
Works at the pool have been jointly funded by Oldham Council and Oldham Community Leisure (OCL).
