Furzefield Leisure Centre — Local services in Hertsmere

Now, don't think David Lloyd or Virgin gym ..... Now carry on reading!

For a local council run establishment this is pretty darn good. The annual membership is less that £40 per year, which means that on every booking you get a discounted rate. Squash for example goes down from £11.30 per game to £7.30 per game. It is pay as you go, the more you use the cheaper it gets. There is a whole host of activities and facilities on offer here, including a pool, beauty centre, Physio, personal trainers, racquet sports, astro pitches and classes to name a few. You would think that the showers would be toe curling and want to avoid at all costs, but this is not the case. Always cleaned to a good standard. The staff on the reception desk are chirpy and always help out, even if you are having a "blonde moment", forget some equipment or mess a booking up. They have an online facility, which is very easy to use and means that you don't have to faff around calling up when at the last minute you remember that you should have booked the court for that evening! Availability is fantastic and to date I have not had an experience of not being able to do what I wanted to. There is free WIFI at the centre and also a cafe. This primarily works for me and my friends as there is no commitment to a contract and is PAYG, so you don't feel like rubbish for wasting a month's membership when life gets in the way of trying to shift that gunt! Like I said, it is no 5* gym, though nor does it claim to be. It does what ti says on the tin and is a...

Very disappointed with the reopening of the leisure centre. After arriving at the gym we were greeted with a huge queue due to the systems being incredibly slow. After paying, we were left to find out for ourselves that the pool was closed down to one lane for ten people, with the rest of the pool left empty. The life guards then started to kick out the slowest of the swimmers before the session was half way through due to two swimmers trying to over take all the others. On the website there are strict rules of no overtaking but it was the slower swimmers who were kicked out.

No where on the website does it state that you need to go as fast as you can and that everyone needs to keep up with the fastest swimmer! Let alone the fact that they squeezed us all into one lane. the staff were incredibly rude demanding the slower swimmers to "leave now" when asking why we need to leave, we were told that we were all keeping up the two fast swimmers. This is a huge disappointment due to the excitement of the pool reopening.

Maybe if you can't stick to your own rules it would be best to stay closed until this virus has all blown over. It's terrible to advertise one service online, pay for that service and then be rudely told to "leave now" with the horrible attitude one of the staff members had.

Hopefully they will clean up their act, but until then I would suggest giving it a miss unless you're the fastest swimmer...

AVOID!! Be wary of joining Furzefield, customer service is disgraceful. It became obvious the gym was underequipped for strength training (e.g. only one bench press), esp. at peak hours so I requested a change to swim only. This should have been a formality but they turned it into a conflict. After a month of not returning calls or replying to emails they refused with the excuse that I should find other ways to train. Not great when you’re training around injuries and have 10 months @ £42 left! I had no choice but to cancel the DD. Harlands who handle the finances (as seen on Watchdog) then start inventing penalties until reaching £722. Eventually Inspire head office agreed I was right and to change category in October. Well into the next year still not heard back. Harlands then pass the “debt” to a collection agency. Legally a joke but a headache you really don’t need. A friend experienced similar when wanting to drop sauna from a membership due to an eye injury. She was told she required evidence from her optician so she provided a signed letter. Furzefield then call the optician without asking permission (!) and even though they confirmed that the steam & lighting was not suitable for her they still refused to change it because the letter was not headed!! The hands on staff are actually fantastic but management treat customers with contempt and make this place too risky to join. There is a lot of...