‘A huge loss’: readers on how UK leisure centre closures have affected them

From Nottingham to the Isle of Wight, people lament losing sense of community as well as facilities

• England has lost almost 400 swimming pools since 2010

Alice, an artist on the Isle of Wight, was hopeful her son would be a confident swimmer by the summer. Her six-year-old had been making good progress in his lessons and was enjoying learning to swim underwater.

So it was a huge loss to learn in January that Gurnard Pines, the leisure centre where he took his lessons had been suddenly closed down. “It was quite dramatic, we heard the locks had been changed and no one could get in,” Alice, 40, says. “Everyone was really distressed. My son had been going for a year and prior to that his swimming had been nonexistent because of the pandemic.”