YOUNG swimmers could be left with nowhere to train after the price of a two-hour session at their club skyrocketed from £152 per hour to £180.

Waltham Forest Swimming Club now needs to raise £20,000 to carry on using the Feel Good Centre, in Chingford Road, or face closing for good.

Its annual £19,500 grant was slashed by Waltham Forest Council this year.

The group waited two years to use the new swimming pool while it was being built, but have now been left bitterly disappointed.

Vice chairman Richard Dawson, who lives in St John’s Road, Walthamstow, has two children who are members of the club.

He said: “When they were building the new centre I could hear it from where I live.

“I think it would have been better to leave some of the refurbishments and give some money to community sports groups.

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“It is no good having the finest state of the art facilities if local clubs cannot afford to use them.

“If we could afford to train in the Feel Good Centre it would give the club more exposure and there would be new members joining.

“My children will be devastated if it closes and as a working parent it will be difficult to take them to training every morning in another borough.”

The Feel Good Centre was opened by Olympian Lutalo Muhammad in September following the council’s £26million refurbishment.

Although they use the 25 metre, eight-lane pool at the centre one evening a week, the group cannot afford to rent it for a week's training so use other pools in the borough.

They need to raise £20,000 by next March to meet the costs of pool hire and coaching fees.

Earlier this year, the club was forced to say goodbye to a coach who had trained members for 12 years because it could not afford to keep paying him.

Chairman of the club Hannah Grimshaw said: “It was very sad.

“We lost our council grant and now we cannot afford to train at the Feel Good Centre.

“I was shocked when I saw the price. I think it is unfair.

“It makes me feel terrible and it is an awful shame because the club has served the borough for 30 years and we don’t want the legacy to go.

“The children will be distraught if we have to close.”

The swimming club, which has been open for 30 years, has 270 members aged between three and a half and 69 years.

Members have started to fundraise online and are offering businesses the opportunity to sponsor a race in their gala in exchange for advertisement.

A spokesman for GLL (Greenwich Leisure Limited) said: “GLL are a charitable social enterprise who are committed to providing excellent, accessible and affordable facilities for the whole community.

“Lane hire has been kept at 2014 rates - so local clubs can benefit. We note this club continues to have an evening booking.

“We’ve standardised pricing at the new £26 million centre and this is in line with the pricing of the rest of the boroughs swimming facilities.”

Cllr Ahsan Khan, cabinet member for health and wellbeing, said: “Unfortunately, reductions in government funding have had an inevitable impact on council grant funding schemes.

“We notified the Borough of Waltham Forest Swimming Club in April this year that it would no longer receive an annual £19.5k grant.

“However, we agreed to provide funding until the end of June in order to give the club time to look into alternative funding streams.”

To donate to the swimming club's crowdfunding campaign click here.