I had an awful experience at Breckland Leisure Centre. Upon entering, we were greeted by shockingly unhygienic changing rooms. There was dirt covering the floors, hair clogging the drains, and a pervasive, overpowering smell of urine. The public swimming session felt dangerously overcrowded and I was genuinely anxious about taking my young child into the water because of this. Most concerningly, despite a massive sign stating the teaching pool is strictly for adults and young children, it was overrun by much older kids splashing wildly. Mixing babies with boisterous older children in a dedicated teaching pool is an accident waiting to happen, yet the lifeguards did absolutely nothing. The lifeguards were frankly extremely unapproachable, preferring to blow their whistles angrily rather than being pleasant. I'm aware similar recent reviews have been replied to by Breckland Leisure Centre promising to implement changes. Based on my visit, nothing has changed following these reviews.

The whole experience using the pool is a disaster. The showers were incredibly hot—so much so that I couldn’t bear to stand under it fully and certainly couldn’t put my 4-year-old in it. The private shower was filthy (buildup on the lower edge of the walls) and stunk of urine. The ladies toilets also stunk and there wasn’t any toilet paper in the cubicle I used. The family changing room has a row of rails running overhead, presumably for hanging wet clothes on while you’re getting changed, but are absolutely caked with dust on top so you’d risk ruining whatever you put up there. There were numerous lockers that appeared to be broken, and most of the available ones are quite small—not suited for family use. Despite booking a time slot, the pools were incredibly crowded. They closed the child & parent pool, using signs that said “swimming lesson in progress,” and five minutes later it was open again. We moved to the large pool for proper swimming, which was decent until they closed it with 45 minutes left in our session. The wave pool was absolutely heaving with people the whole time, and the waves didn’t turn on once while we were there. Lastly, we didn’t even have to show proof that we’d paid to get in, which leaves me to wonder if maybe that’s the reason for the overcrowding. All in all, it was not a very fun experience.

We had booked swimming for 3 adults and 4 children the night before, drove an hour to get there just to be told on arrival that we couldn’t go. They confirmed there was a problem with the swimming pools that meant they had been closed since opening that morning but that they couldn’t possibly have let the people who had prebooked about the pool closure. The lady was sat at the reception desk scoffing a sausage roll with crumbs dribbling all down her face and desk, it was a joke and to be honest, she could have exercised her customer service skills better. We left with 3 crying children, down on petrol, and everyone was disappointed all because they couldn’t be bothered to export client details and send a joint email. Maybe some admin training might be a good idea alongside customer service training.

This leisure centre has a main pool with a learner/baby pool and a smaller fun pool with wave machine, jacuzzi jets and small lazy river. Wave machine is actually quite powerful so we stayed at the far end of the pool as to feel safe. Pool tiles on the shallow end of this pool can be quite rough and with the movement of the waves my Daughter ended up with a bit of friction burn. We visited the first session during the school holidays at 10am and although it was busy we didnt find it overcrowded and still haha plenty of room to swim in the larger pool. Changing rooms were clean but we were the first session of the day to use them.

Made our first 'accessible' visit stress free. Very wheelchair accessible - parking near the entrance, disabled changing facilities with a shower, toilet, hand basin and mirror, hairdryer, changing bed suitable for adults and went straight out to the poolside. It also had a chair that was available to wheel into the water if necessary. The water wasn't very warm unfortunately but we still had a good time.