THE swimming pools at the PEAK will be closed until March 2019, as "urgent emergency repairs" are carried out.

Officials say problems with the concrete layers of the main pool were discovered during planned repair and cleaning works last week and both Active Stirling and Stirling Council are now in the process of carrying out further investigations.

The initial repairs were scheduled to last five weeks, but it has become clear that major work is now needed and the pools will remain closed until this is completed.

Councillor Chris Kane, convenor of the community planning and regeneration committee which oversees sport and physical activity, as well as the partnership with Active Stirling, said the situation was obviously disappointing, but sadly unavoidable.

He said: "This is clearly a disappointing situation and I know all PEAK customers will be deeply frustrated at this news.

“Active Stirling and the council are now looking at every option to provide alternative provision of swimming for customers and keep the closure to as short a time frame as possible.”

Information on suitable alternatives and options for all customers, including the learn to swim programme, recreational swimming for ALL IN members, pay as you go customers and Primary 5 swimming, will be confirmed by Active Stirling in the coming days.

Active Stirling is also speaking with other nearby leisure centres to establish if additional arrangements and access can be made and these alternative arrangements will be published as soon as they are available.

Customers are asked to please keep checking by email, web pages and social media channels for updates in the meantime.

Andrew Bain, Active Stirling cief executive added: “As you can appreciate, this has been an entirely unexpected and highly disruptive discovery and we sincerely apologise to all of our customers for this closure.

“We are working hard to try to find as many alternative arrangements and options as possible to keep this disruption to a minimum and we will contact you to outline these, in the next week or so – or sooner - along with an update on our web pages and social media channels.

“Due to the volume of enquiries we receive by phone, please send any queries relating to this by email to bookings@activestirling.org.uk, quoting POOL CLOSURE as your reference, along with your/your child’s name and postcode and we will respond to you within 48 hours.”