A DISABLED couple in Barnoldswick are finding it more and more difficult to use the town's swimming pool due to alterations to the changing facilities there.

Steve Allen and his wife Fran use the pool regularly to help ease their medical conditions.

Fran, who suffers from osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, is severely disabled and has sessions in the pool with a visiting physiotherapist from the Burnley NHS Trust.

Steve, 49, suffers from a back injury sustained through nursing and also has arthritis and heart problems. He also finds using the pool for gentle exercise, without pressure on painful joints, to be very beneficial.

But the Gisburn Street couple have found it difficult to use the Barnoldswick pool since the changing facilities were altered.

Steve explained that the pool used to have a changing room and toilet facility solely for the disabled. However, the room has now been allocated for joint use by families and disabled people, even though the pool already has male and female changing rooms and a family changing area.

"Since this new system was brought in it has made it even harder for disabled people to use the room," said Steve. "Sometimes it has been full and once my wife had someone knocking on the door and telling her to hurry up because their child needed to get changed."

He added that the pool was a great facility for Barnoldswick and many disabled people used it to help with their conditions, but some no longer felt they were being welcomed and catered for.

He had spoken with the manager about some sort of priority system for disabled users, perhaps with a key for the disabled room kept at reception, but with no success.

However, Phil Storey, chief executive of Pendle Leisure Trust, said just such a system was already in operation.

"There is now a control on that room in that a key is kept at reception and people who want to use it have to ask for the key," said Mr Storey.

He added that he had already talked with Mr Allen and was sympathetic to his case, but that the pool had to make the best use of its facilities.

"For the majority of the time the disabled room is not in use, while the family room is often busy, so we have had to double up the use of the disabled room. I accept there have been times when it has been abused, for example with children using it unsupervised, which is why we introduced the key system."

Mr Storey said he would double check that the key system was in use and that if disabled people had problems using the facilities he would look into the reasons why.

Another problem raised by Mr Allen was that the disabled parking spaces near the main entrance to the pool were sometimes abused by able-bodied drivers, especially at busy times. He had spoken to the police, who would only give out parking tickets if Pendle Leisure Trust gave its permission.

But Mr Storey said staff at the pool had instructions to monitor the disabled spaces whenever possible and speak to people wrongly using them, or leave notices on their cars.

"If necessary, staff could even announce the registration number of the car on the public address system and ask the owner to move it," said Mr Storey.

"In the meantime we would ask people visiting the pool and sports hall not to misuse the disabled spaces and to think about the inconvenience they could be causing if they do."