Facility News from the LRC

On occasion adjustments are made to our activity and facility schedules.  Details will be provided here, including when regular operations and schedules are anticipated to resume.

​Main Pool and Waterslide Closure

- Updated October 1, 2022 -

Main Pool has re-opened at the LRC Aquatic Centre.

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-Updated September 28, 2022-

Aquatic Centre - Main Pool and Waterslide Closure until further notice for additional maintenance.

The work will be completed as quickly as possible. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

For the up to date schedule, please visit live.leduc.ca.

Indoor Schedules Changes

- Updated September 7, 2022 -

Due to staffing levels, adjustments have been made to our pool schedules in order to ensure sufficient senior staff coverage at our facility.  Operating hours during a limited number of time periods have been reduced at the facility between now and the end of the year.  The affected times are primarily Friday - Monday at the beginning or end of the day to shorten overall operating hours. 

LRC Indoor Pool

Up-to-date Schedule Information

Plan your next visit by looking up operating hours and acitivity schedules here:

• Indoor Pool

Aquatic Service Level Adjustments FAQ's

Why did the city change service levels at its aquatic facilities?
We are struggling to keep up with staff resources to not only operate our aquatic facility but to also offer enough programming to meet current demand. This is due to lasting impacts of the pandemic, inflation and job security; all contributing to widespread staffing shortages which is greatly pronounced in the aquatics industry. It takes 40 hours for a lifeguard to become certified and another 40 hours of training and onboarding to orient them to the specifics of working in our facility. Depending on their availability, this onboarding process can take between 1 - 4 weeks. We are not alone in this struggle. For us specifically, the departure of experienced staff combined with the time it takes to certify new staff and then for them to gain the experience and mentorship necessary to oversee other staff, has required us to revisit the hours of operation at our facility to ensure sufficient senior staff coverage.
 
What other communities are experiencing the same issues?
Besides the province’s two largest cities (Calgary and Edmonton), we know fellow municipalities of Spruce Grove, Beaumont and Fort Saskatchewan are experiencing ongoing challenges with attraction and retention of experienced aquatics staff. Being that all surrounding facilities are struggling with this, the pool of people available for all of us to draw from has become significantly smaller, making it a longer process to find and recruit new staff.
 
What are the impacts on service levels?
We’ve had to change our operating hours for the Fall Season. Affected operational hours are primarily Sundays & Mondays due to a shortage of senior staff available (more details can be found on Live Leduc).
 
I’ve seen the advertisements and understand that the city has new lifeguards coming on board.  Why are closures now happening with more pool staff being hired?
The strategies we put in place to recruit and certify new lifeguards and instructors have successfully increased staffing levels. Most of our new hires are new with little to no experience. In a highly regulated, safety environment these new employees have restrictions on what they can do independently and with minimal supervision. As we’re experiencing a critical shortage of experienced senior staff and supervisors we’ve had to make the hard decision to change facility operations.

What is the city doing to resolve the issue?
We’re continuing to target recruitment efforts for individuals with experience, providing training and development for existing staff, and increasing the number of permanent employees. All these efforts are designed to complement our modified operations to make the best use of existing resources.
 
I’ve noticed that the indoor pool schedule no longer allows for shared activities like public swimming during lessons. Why is this?
Since the pool expanded 15 years ago and spontaneous-use schedule was introduced, the community has doubled in size and so has demands for aquatic services. A necessary change in this rebalancing was to move away from the 12-hour (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.) spontaneous-use schedule to an activity-based pool schedule. This allows complementary activities to be combined into the same blocks and other type of activities will be scheduled at a different time, maximizing participation in each block. This activity-based schedule was introduced last summer with positive attendance results. The activity-based schedule will also help increase the overall capacity and experience for each type of activity in comparison to all-day spontaneous use.
 
I was not able to get my kids into swim lessons this summer, why is that?
We have maximized the number of lessons offered at the indoor pool based on available instructors and the number of swim stations we can operate at any given time. Like other communities, we have been and are continuing to certify new swim instructors through training programs. This process takes time but is having success. In addition, our pool has a limited number of lesson stations. Following the pandemic, we’ve seen a shift in demand from preschool lessons to the low Swim Kids levels (Swim Kids 1 - 3). This is because the kids who were queued up to take these levels, did not have the opportunity to do so over the pandemic, creating a large backlog and shifting demand to slightly higher levels. With such high demand, and limited pool space for these levels, it will be over a period of years, not months, that we are able to catch up to the community’s demand for swim lessons due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and now due to challenging staff circumstances.
 
Can I still access the steam room or hot tub at the indoor pool outside of public swimming times?
At least one of our hot pools and the steam room is available for drop-in use during all hours of operation at the indoor pool.