Issue - meetings

Report of the Head of Economy Leisure and Property (attached)

The feedback from the contractor will be circulated separately.

Purpose: to consider the performance of GLL in providing the leisure management service in South Oxfordshire district for the period 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2013 and make any recommendations to the cabinet member for leisure, grants and community safety to enable him to make a final assessment on performance.

The committee considered the report of the Head of Economy, Leisure and Property setting out GLL’s performance in delivering the leisure management contract from 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2013.

The committee also considered Annex D to the report, circulated after the agenda publication, setting out the contractor’s comments.

Mr Chris Webb, Leisure Facility Development officer; Ms Kate Arnold, Leisure Manager; Mr Bill Service, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Grants and Community Safety; and Mr C James and Mr J Amat of GLL answered questions from the committee as follows:

·          Cleanliness is one of the hardest targets for any leisure contractor to meet. In Annex B, Park’s score for cleanliness of changing rooms should be 3.0.

·          KTP7 measured how much the council paid (or received) per visit taking into account any income from fees, and KTP9 measured the total cost of a visitor to the sports centre not taking into account any fee charged.

·          GLL had struggled to employ enough staff in the centres, especially at middle management level, and had addressed this by increasing salaries, holding recruitment days and increasing advertising. Staffing had improved. The industry was not well paid generally and the majority of staff stayed a relatively short time then left the industry altogether.

·          Abbey sports centre had a new management team in place since March and had achieved their Quest rating.

·          ‘Other’ complaints covered a wide range of issues affecting a minority of users from a lack of WiFi to timetable changes, prices, and disquiet at the reduction in sessions for sports halls from 60 to 40 minutes to accommodate more users.

·          GLL senior management was working with their centres’ management teams, meeting them weekly and trying to proactively address issues before these were raised at the monthly meeting with the council’s client officers.

·          Each centre offered different programmes and facilities and the pricing structure differed across this district and Vale of White Horse to reflect this.

Members of the committee commented:

·          They were disappointed in the decline in performance from the previous year and the additional work imposed on officers which impacted on their ability to deliver other services.

·          They appreciated that leisure facilities were difficult to staff and run, and the problems related mainly to staffing, but noted the concerns over the corporate culture’s impact on performance.

·          Everyone was aware of where the problems were and the agreed action plan should address these. The committee hoped to see a good improvement over next year.

RESOLVED: to recommend that the Cabinet Member for Leisure, Grants and Community Safety makes a final assessment of GLL’s performance in delivering the leisure management contract from 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2013 of Fair.