'So frustrating': Technical problem pushes back London swimming registration

Andrew Lupton · CBC News

· Posted: May 15, 2025 1:50 PM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Some London parents were perplexed aft they were incapable to registry their children successful the city's aquatics programme connected Thursday morning. The metropolis said the occupation lies with its third-party registration system.

Registration for the city's summertime aquatics programs was acceptable to unfastened astatine 8:30 a.m. Many parents set their schedules to get the champion accidental and registry their kid earlier the classes capable up.

Kim Lankosz was astatine her machine and began the registration process close astatine 8:30 a.m. However, she got an mistake connection astatine the outgo signifier and wasn't capable to motion her six-year-old girl up for aquatics lessons. 

"It's truthful frustrating, particularly erstwhile you acceptable calendars and alarms and you spell done each the planning," she told CBC News. "I entered each my details, it took maine to the outgo page, I clicked 'submit' and it came up with a paper mistake message."

Repeated attempts to implicit the registration process ended the aforesaid way. Then she began to person messages from colleagues and different parents moving into the aforesaid issue.

"There were astir a twelve of america who were similar 'What's going on,'" she said.

Seeking an explanation, Lankosz called the metropolis and spent 2 hours connected clasp earlier being told that registration was pushed backmost to adjacent week. The metropolis posted astir the occupation connected their Facebook leafage conscionable earlier 9:30 a.m.

City responds

In a connection sent to CBC News, a metropolis staffer apologized for the delays, which helium said were caused by its third-party registration strategy "which is impacting customers' quality to registry for our high-demand aquatic programing." 

The metropolis said they've pushed the registration backmost to adjacent week, with nary circumstantial clip yet set, portion the method issues are sorted out.

"Due to the vexation this is causing customers, and the interaction it is having connected different resources crossed the corporation, we person decided to intermission aquatic registration contiguous and reset the registration day for different time adjacent week, oregon erstwhile the method issues person been resolved," said the connection by Jon-Paul McGonigle, the city's manager of recreation and sport.

Lankosz said she'll beryllium backmost online whenever registration reopens, saying the aquatics lessons are important to making her girl h2o harmless for summer. 

"I'm going to effort again, and I anticipation that I tin get into the programs that I want," she said.