Castle leisure centre - rule change

It is great to have a local leisure centre with so many classes and activities but what is a real shame is up until last week when you hired a badminton court you got the racquets for free. A great way to make it easier for us to all shed a few pounds without the expense of owning the equipment. They have scrapped it now. Why? Apparently too many racquets were being stolen or broken by people using the courts. I simply don't get the motivation for people to do this. We make progress and it's one step forward two steps back.

It isn't clear from the post if now racquets can only be hired for a fee, or if they are not supplied at all leaving users of the squash courts no other option than to bring their own.
In the case of the former, it would be better if a fixed amount of money were to be deducted from the card of any member (I understand that credit/debit cards are used to take out a membership) who failed to return a racquet, or who unreasonably damaged it.

But they should not be charged just for using this piece of kit.

In the case of the latter, the leisure centre should be aware of the fact than it isn't possible for everyone to carry around a squash racquet all day so that on their way home after work they may stop at Castle for a session.

easiest thing would be to just require a deposit on equipment, fully refunded when the equipment was.

batfastard wrote:

Easiest thing would be to just require a deposit on equipment, fully refunded when the equipment was returned.

I wonder why they never thought of that?
Of course now, it may be too complicated to implement deposits.
Maybe it demonstrates that staff are unable to feed ideas to management, and that management are unwilling to accommodate the needs of the users.
(Decathlon badminton racquet prices start at £2.99)