A state-of-the-art gym in Marlow failed to open over the summer – and is now ‘ignoring’ members who paid over £300 for early bird subscriptions.

The Lunar Health Club announced its plans to launch a “cutting edge, Olympic-grade” health and fitness centre on Pound Lane early this year with an initial opening date of April.

The company, which was formed in July 2023, then told membership holders it had pushed the opening back to July – assuring them that their triple-digit down payments would be made good before the year was out.

Fast forward a few months, however, and the club is still not open, with manager Ben Bateman and other contact points appearing to have vanished – emails generating no response and phone lines ringing off.

Subscription holders have also been left out of pocket, with no prospect of being granted access to the purportedly “state-of-the-art” facilities they shelled out big bucks for.

Three recent Google reviews for the Lunar Health Club detail such experiences, with Reham Ahmed warning others not to buy the pre-sale membership, which he had purchased back in July and has since managed to claw back through his credit card company.

Another member, Darren West, said he paid a deposit of £330 last December and has had no communications from management since July. He is also now trying to get his money back.

Meanwhile, a third reviewer, Reema K said the “many follow-up emails” she had sent after paying for a pre-sale membership had been ignored.

She added: “I was told there would be a slight delay in the club opening and asked for an estimated opening date – Ben told me he would be in contact (but) since then, there has been no response to emails, no word at all.

“I paid via debit card, so the money has been lost.”

The registered address for the gym looks like a construction zone (Image: NQ)

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A massage therapist who wanted to stay anonymous also told this newspaper that correspondences about a job at the gym had gone quiet in January after a round of interviews was delayed while its manager “oversaw building development”.

Information released ahead of the Lunar Health Club's planned opening in April positioned it as a “beacon of luxury wellness” offering well-to-do locals treatments including cryotherapy, bio-stacking and NAD drips.

A series of glossy CGI renderings of the facility’s interiors were also released at the start of the year.

The directors of the club, which sits empty at Wethered House on Pound Lane, are listed on Companies House as Neel Sunil Jobanputra and Sarika Jobanputra.

The company has three outstanding charges on the register, including a £250,000 loan from investor Jason Korinek in June.

The Lunar Health Club has not responded to repeated attempts to make contact by this newspaper.