LEISURE chiefs are in hot water today – from swimmers upset about the lack of it.

Users of Felixstowe Leisure Centre have launched a barrage of complaints about the swimming pools at the beachside complex, saying the water is just too cold.

Parents have told of shivering youngsters’ lips turning blue, tiny children asking to be taken out of the water, and say many families are now travelling to Ipswich’s Crown Pools instead.

A Facebook page set up about the issue has been inundated with comments with nearly 500 people agreeing.

But council chiefs have poured cold water on the complaints – and say the water is between 27 and 30 degrees C.

Kathryn Braden, of Trimley St Martin, who took her two-year-old daughter Sylvie to the leisure centre in Undercliff Road West, said children regularly had blue lips just a few minutes after being in the water.

“If I was going in there to do 50 lengths it would probably not be an issue because you would get warm. But the children’s and baby pool is just very cold and you cannot keep your child in for very long.

“If you go to Crown Pools it is very different – nice and warm, like getting into a bath.”

The woman behind the Facebook page, who declined to be named, said: “The facilities at the leisure centre and the swimming lessons are excellent, it’s just the water temperature which people are complaining about. When you have young children, as a parent you are standing around keeping an eye on them, and they perhaps cannot swim and are not moving about so much, and it is very cold. It’s really disappointing.”

A spokesman for Suffolk Coastal District Council said: “We have reviewed pool and air temperature readings completed and supplied to us by DC Leisure, operators of the facility, which are carried out no less than three times daily.

“The range of recommended pool temperatures for baby, teaching, leisure and competition sessions are from 27-30 degrees centigrade and all their tests across the past two weeks show numbers between those temperatures.

“Given there is one filtration system for all pools it isn’t a straightforward decision to simply turn the temperature up, given the requirements of all our users including swimming clubs.

“However DC Leisure and the council do take complaints very seriously and will continue to monitor the pools closely to establish whether there could possibly be any other factors affecting temperatures and if any action can be taken to address this.”