Issues raised in the flagship installation of the Lasswade Center

Visitors worry that the state-of-the-art facility is constantly suffering from damage and a lack of repairs, including locks broken since Christmas on the only two private showers, and the steam room out of service for more than a month .

Concerned regular user Stephen Fraser (48) of Loanhead said: “It’s been like this for a while. I have been using it for 18 months for swimming. Every time I go there something is broken.

“For a flagship three-year-old school, it’s just a shocking state of affairs.

“When you go from the reception to the pool, you avoid the buckets because the false ceilings are broken and there is water flowing.

“And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of maintenance going on. I spoke to the manager of the recreation center to tell him that there is always something wrong. He says they had a problem with the contractors and they are bringing in someone else.

“He told me to try somewhere else, but I’m going to Lasswade to meet friends, so that’s not an answer for me.

“The locker doors, half of them don’t work, and some of them don’t have wristbands.

“It affects the community as a whole if everything doesn’t work out as it should.

“It’s just ridiculous. A three-year-old school that needs so much work.

“Nobody wants to know when there is a problem. Everyone is hiding behind each other.

“I just wish someone would take responsibility and say ‘yes there are problems, but we are fixing them’.

Bonnyrigg Community Council President Darius Namdaran is well aware of Lasswade’s problems.

He said: “This has been brought up in our meetings over the past eight months. There were issues with showers, toilets, water leaks and the disabled lift.

“The main problem is that it takes two or three weeks to fix anything. I think the hot tub has been offline for about a month now. And the hammam or the sauna is the same.

“Our approach was to continually ask advisors to deal with these issues and eventually the issues were resolved.

“But there seems to be an underlying problem. They had a number of system failures.

A council spokesperson said, “We apologize to customers for the ongoing maintenance issues and want to reassure the locals that we are committed to resolving them.

“To address specific concerns, there was an issue with the roof design, which was brought to the attention of the contractor. This has now been resolved at no cost to the board.

“We had problems obtaining parts to maintain the steam generator in the hammam. We have now found a manufacturer and we hope the steam room will be open again shortly. There was also a persistent issue with some users vandalizing the locks and we had to adapt some designs to make them more durable. The Jacuzzi pump was accidentally damaged but is now working.

“We would like to thank the residents for their patience, as we attach great importance to their custom. “