Agenda item

To receive and note an update on the Leisure Centre Contract Management Review.

The Committee was advised that the previous Committee in 2016/17 had established a Leisure Centre Contract Management Review Sub-Committee in November 2016 to review the management of the Waverley Leisure Centre contracts with Places for People. The review focused on exploring the effectiveness of the contract and was to identify opportunities for improvement including potential cost savings and lessons which could be applied to other major Council projects. The review set out to establish how effectively the Council’s priorities of  Community Wellbeing, Customer Services and Value for Money were being delivered through the management of the contract for this discretionary service. Cllrs Wyatt Ramsdale and Richard Seaborne who were on the Sub-Committee attended this meeting in order to hear the status of the actions.

Tamsin Macleod, the Leisure Contracts Manager, presented the recommendations to the Committee and highlighted progress with some of the actions. Comments on the recommendations are noted below:

·         Develop a clear policy setting out the Council’s priorities for leisure centres in Waverley

Kelvin Mills, the Head of Community Services outlined that there were a number of policies adopted by the Council which addressed leisure. These consisted of the Corporate Plan, Service Plans, Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the Indoor Leisure Facilities Strategy. He asked Members whether this was enough was anything being missed. It was an Executive function to set policy decisions on health and wellbeing priorities for Leisure Centres and Cllr Jenny Else, who was at the meeting would take this away and look into it.   

The Committee asked how well GPs in the Borough were doing at referring patients to a leisure centre for specific classes as this was something that had come up recently with the Health Inequalities Working Group. Members were advised that there was a Health and Wellbeing Manager who was working hard to contact GPs and had written to all of them promoting the leisure centres rather than taking medicine to resolve a problem. Some GPs were better than others, Farnham in particular, was exceeding the others. It was a challenge though to get into GPs to spread the message and were always looking for different avenues. It was noted that there was a particularly good Patient Participation Forum in Cranleigh which reached out to a number of people. Cllr Patricia Ellis would forward the details onto the Team. It was noted that the Royal Surrey was good at referring people to leisure centres. It was noted that a number of people in the Borough would go to St Georges Hospital and they should approach them to use this scheme. 

·         Profit share should be set against costs incurred by the Council running the contract, together with asset depreciation and life cycle costs

The Committee was advised that financial data against depreciation and lifecycle cost could be presented to the Committee annually if they would like to receive it. Members felt that although this would be useful, they felt it was more important that the officers were aware of these on a regular basis which they didn’t necessarily need. A question was asked about the alignment negotiations which were going well but they could not go into the detail in a public forum. 

·         Steps should be taken to ensure that opportunities are being investigated and taken to reduce the Council’s internal operating costs for managing the leisure centres including further options for energy efficiencies.

The Committee was advised that the operating costs of the leisure centres lied with PfP. The only operating costs that lied with Waverley were the staffing costs of the Leisure Team, whom closely managed and monitored the contract to ensure value for money and some of the contractual lifecycle costs. These costs were reviewed annually during the budget setting period. Energy efficiencies were continually identified and implemented where appropriate by Waverley and PfP. Members felt that it was important that officers reviewed operating costs in more detail to enable them to identify costs and where profit could be gained. Furthermore, they felt that they should receive them more regularly than annually.

·         Review the performance indicators currently in use – Performance sharing network with other Local Authorities; Measureable targets to be set in accordance with an overall policy

The Committee was advised that there was no statutory national performance indicators for the leisure industry. The ones they had set were currently being reviewed and a proposal for a new set of more relevant and useful targets would be shared with Members in due course. Councillors spoke about what “good” actually looked like as they didn’t know what others were doing to make good or better and although Quest said that we were doing well, how could this be measured.

·         To encourage partnership working with the clinical commissioning groups to explore opportunities to work alongside healthcare professionals to break down barriers to physical activity and tackle health inequalities; including investigating how occupational therapy could be introduced for the purpose of leisure rehabilitation.

It was agreed that this should be amber and not green until the recommendations were received from the Health Inequalities Working Group.

·         To investigate and implement the use of Quest, or equivalent industry leading management tools, across third party contracts as this had proven a very successful tool for monitoring performance.

The Committee was advised that Quest was specific for the Leisure Industry and it wouldn’t be possible for it to be used by other industries. Kelvin Mills would be speaking with Heads of Services soon about how they could bench mark their services with the right tools to do it.

The Committee thanked officers for the update and it would come back to a future meeting to look again at progress.