Agenda item

To examine the progress and performance of the Trust in its first six months of operation and provide comment to contribute to future monitoring of the Council’s contract with the Trust

Mark Wheelton, Commissioning Manager for Leisure and Wellbeing, presented a report on the transfer of leisure centre and sports development services to a recently established charitable trust “Everybody Sport & Recreation” (ESAR). Mark was responsible for monitoring the performance of the Trust to ensure it delivered the outcomes expected by the Council outlined by contractual performance indicators.

Peter Hartwell, Chief Executive of ESAR, attending the meeting to provide an overview of the Trust’s activity since being established in March 2014 and services and staff being formally transferred to the Trust on 1 May 2014.

During questioning by the Committee the following points rose:

·         The Council’s contract with ESAR was for the next ten years with an optional five year extension.

·         The Council paid an annual management fee to the Trust and revenue from fees and charges to customers was used to fund the services. Any surplus was reinvested into services.

·         The Trust bought back some back office services from the Council or some alternative service delivery vehicles, such as ANSA. As the corporate landlord of the leisure and sports assets the Council was paid a management fee.

·         ESAR was responsible for setting fees and charges for services but did so in consultation with the Council.

·         As the commissioner of the service Mark regularly visited leisure centres and held monitoring meetings with centre managers and Peter as the Chief Executive.

·         There had been no change in fees and charges at leisure centres since April 2013.

·         Customer visits and attendance at events had previously not been recorded in a uniform way across facilities. A new uniform system was now being used however it was difficult to compare numbers with previous years to evaluate performance. It was suggested that this year’s figures should be used as a base line for future years comparison.

·         The Trust was developing a system for online booking and payment of exercise classes. It had also introduced a new customer complaints and compliments system and launched an online user survey which would hopefully help the Trust to identify was to improve services.

·         The Trust’s services had an impact on the Council’s strategic outcome 5 (people living well for longer). The Public Health Team monitored the measures for achievement of outcome 5 including the Trust’s contribution to it.

·         The Trust and Public Health needed to consider a strategy for how to get more people using the Trust’s services, and generally taking part in exercise, in order to improve the health and wellbeing of the population.

·         As well as operating from its facilities the Trust was putting staff out in the community to provide services across a wider area and encourage more people to be active.

·         The Trust needed to develop relationships with schools that had joint use agreements on some leisure facilities such as pools. The schools had agreements with the Council but the Trust needed to become a partner in the relationship to ensure facilities were being used in the best possible way, especially when schools were out of term.

·         The Committee was generally pleased with the apparent developments that had taken place in the previous five months. However it was keen to see performance information to ensure the Trust was effectively delivering against performance measures, particularly in relation to customer attendances. It was suggested that a more accurate analysis of the Trust’s performance data would be available when its annual report was produced in May 2015.

RESOLVED:

(a)  That the reports be noted.

(b)  That the Committee requests that Mark Wheelton and Peter Hartwell attend a meeting to present Everybody Sport and Recreation Trust’s annual report for examination in June 2015.

(c)  That the Committee’s comments during the meeting be submitted to Mark Wheelton and Peter Hartwell for consideration.