Open Political Door
It’s probably true to say that as an industry we’re pushing at an open ‘political’ door. A large number of politicians, of all persuasions and at all levels, take their personal fitness and health more seriously than ever and many more MPs see sport and fitness as key to drive the public agenda.
The more facts and figures we can collectively put together to answer the need for ‘evidence based on data’ helps our many supporters and will challenge the few remaining sceptics.
The UK is unique in having well-defined public and private sector provision. Most other countries find it impossible to collect and maintain information on the public sector but in the UK last year, we know that the public sector accounts for 4.1% of UK population participating, across 2,378 sites.
But these figure are about to change for the better, thanks to a more vigorous way of collecting the data on live members and an improved way of counting ’pay and play’. In the new system like-for-like analysis will also be possible for the first time.
Investment coming to fruition
These changes are coming at a time when lots of new investment in sports facilities comes to fruition. DC Leisure, last year, opened the £12 million Elmbridge Xcel Leisure Complex and the £12 million Wolverhampton Swimming & Fitness Centre. In 2007 DC will open three new wet & dry leisure centres worth £23 million in Amber Valley and four new facilities worth £35 million in Rotherham. In North London, meanwhile, Tessa Jowell found time in a busy diary to tour round and perform the opening ceremony at the Willesden Sports Centre on the 20th February 2007. Willesden is back on the map thanks to Leisure Connection’s £16 million PFI project.
The PPP/PFI schemes completed by DC Leisure, Leisure Connection and Parkwood Leisure have all been delivered on time or even earlier with no cost overruns. Parkwood signed one of the first PPP schemes with Bexley Council back in 2003 and this £31m project was recently opened by the Queen.
A report by the Centre for Policy Studies found that 88% of PPP/PFI projects were delivered on time and with no cost overruns. This compares with previous research which showed that 70% of projects using traditional public sector procurement methods were late and that as many as 73% ran over budget.
Good news stories
In every instance these new PPP/PFI sports facilities are replacing one or more older facilities that were no longer fit for purpose. All the old sites had been failing to meet customer expectations for some time; attendances were low and going lower, and investment was needed to turn the situation around. At Elmbridge, for example, in the last full year of the old facility 275,000 attendances were recorded, while this figure was achieved in just three months at the new Xcel. DC Leisure are forecasting around 1 million visits for the first full year. Elmbridge and DC can see that all types of participation are up: swimming has increased by 265%, swimming lessons by 57%, centre membership has gone up by 163% and fitness membership has grown by 233%.
Similar good news stories abound all over the country and not just at brand new facilities. The leisure management company SERCO Leisure has seen its policy of regular investment in older facilities also turn into increased participation. Across their three sports venues in West Lancashire from April 2006 to March 2007 just over 1 million customers participated. In 2005 SERCO invested £1.5 million across the sites and had an 11% growth in usage. In 2006 a further £200,000 was ploughed in and the additional 6% growth took the usage figure past the magical 1 million. This broke all local records for total participation. Fitness membership across the three sites went up by 123,000 between 2005 and 2007.
Private leisure management companies are not alone in seeing increase in participation on the back of investment. Trusts and in-house teams are all recording similar increases albeit often smaller investment and often matched by smaller uptake.
Partnership with Loughborough University
Until now the link between investment and increase in participation has never been recorded and analysed but both sets of data are set to be brought together through a partnership between Loughborough University Business School and The Leisure Database Company. For the next 18 months the PhD research student, Ian Hodgkinson, will be collating data from our research partners across the public sector to investigate in some detail the link between investment and participation and the detail of who’s actually taking part.
The fitness industry has a great story to tell and Hodgkinson’s work will add to this debate with some hard evidence.
David Minton
David writes a monthly column in Leisure Report to review published columns
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