Tiger Sports have been advertising children's activities based at Rhyl Leisure Centre over the holiday period. We were sent details of the Easter scheme and immediately signed up for both our children to attend at at total cost of £114.
At 5.30pm on March 20 we received a phone call to say that our youngest child could no longer take part in the activities as they had just been told they could not take under-8s on the programme. By this time we had both finished work for the Easter weekend and had no way of making alternative arrangements for childcare or of contacting our employers.
I asked to speak to the manager at the Leisure Centre but was told he was not available until Saturday when I was promised he would telephone me. He did not call and I eventually telephoned him at 4pm on Saturday.
He said that a special licence was required to allow under-8s to take part in activities and it appears they had allowed this licence to lapse. He was contacted by a member of Denbighshire County Council staff in Ruthin as he did not hold a valid licence. He said that he had then obtained the paperwork for the appropriate licence and had sent all the application paperwork to the council by recorded delivery two weeks before.
He had received no response so had assumed all was in order until he received a phone call from his line manager at 4pm on Thursday. The manager told me that the council needs three months to process a licence application so he should have known it would not be ready for the Easter activities and should not have been taking bookings knowing he did not have this in place.
I find this a totally disgraceful situation. It appears that they were not able to contact everyone who had booked their children onto the activities so people will be turning up on Tuesday morning and will be turned away. We feel that all the inconvenienced parents should be compensated for the loss of valuable leave and the Leisure Centre should ensure this never happens again.
COLUM McCORMACK
32 East Parade
Rhyl