Planners have said that a swimming pool should not be hosting non-school lessons after 26 residents objected.

Officers were asked to formally approve the existing community use of the pool at Thorpe House School in Chalfont St Peter last year.

The company Seriously Fun Swimming Schools has been teaching non-pupils at the facility off Oval Way since 2019.

But this week, the council refused to grant a certificate of lawfulness to regularise the pool’s use due to noise from lessons disturbing neighbours.

It argued that mitigation measures, including an ‘acoustic fence’ to trap noise, were not enough to make the use of the pool acceptable.

An environmental health officer said: “They are collectively flawed by way of proven insufficiency, irrelevancy, unreasonableness, and/or are unenforceable.”

The plans for the use of the pool stated that neighbours would not be impacted because hours would be restricted term time and 4:30pm to 7:30pm Monday to Friday and 9:30am to 12:30pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

Plans stated that the swimming lessons would be supervised, would not include music and would be limited to 12 children at a time.

But neighbours claimed they could hear noise from a heating generator and the pool door being left open.

Other objections focused on disturbance from lights inside the building and that there were several alternative public pools available nearby.

The council officer said the ‘years of noise and other disturbance’ from the non-school use of the pool amounted to a ‘common law nuisance’.