Parents and children who turned up on the opening day of Borehamwood's new swimming pool on Monday were left disappointed and angry after being turned away.

Scores of children queued with their parents outside the pool's entrance to take part in the open day's free activities -- only to discover that The Venue's management were restricting entry numbers.

According to angry parents who contacted The Borehamwood Times, entrance to the open day's most popular afternoon event, the Monster Disco Splash, was only permitted to those who had been given tickets at a previous pool session.

Karen Rawlins, of Farriers Way, Borehamwood, arrived at the pool around 3pm but was quickly turned away by the pool's manager.

"There were a lot of people coming back towards us and walking away so I assumed it had finished -- we must have passed about 35 people who were going back to the car park.

"When we got there the manager said it was tickets only and they had been issued to people at the last session. He said that according to health and safety regulations they couldn't allow more than 150 children in the pool at any one time. I was absolutely furious because I had paid for a babysitter especially so I could take my son and nephew to the new pool," she said.

Janice Morley of Bullhead Road, Borehamwood, arrived around 2pm with her two sons aged 14 and nine, but was disgusted when her children were told to leave the pool area.

"My boys were only in the pool for a few minutes and hadn't even got their hair wet when they told them to get out because the Disco Splash was starting. Only the kids that had tickets, which had been put in plastic holders, were allowed in.

"The management said it was a last-minute decision but it looked like the tickets had already been printed in advance. If we had been turned away because there were too many people I wouldn't have minded, but what they did was really mean," she said.

Joy Cox, who lives in Borehamwood, turned up at the start of the open day but was also left disappointed when her nine-year-old daughter was refused entry to the afternoon event.

"There was nothing to indicate that they were going to restrict the numbers later on -- we saw people being turned away from Splash around 2.40pm, " she said.

Hertsmere Borough Council's Chris Rushton agreed that the pool had experienced "teething troubles" but said that management at The Venue were planning to give away vouchers offering children another free swimming session.

He said: "We were overwhelmed with demand on the day, but that is good news -- there's much to be positive about. More than 2,000 people swam on Monday which was considerably more than we expected. We capped numbers to 150 at any one time in the pool to comply with health and safety regulations, but we were deeply disappointed that people were turned away. The fact that we are using temporary changing and office facilities -- as part of phase one of the development -- affected our decision to cap our capacity."

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