Leisure centres see financial upswing but throughput falls

There has been a remarkable improvement in the financial efficiency of leisure centres across the UK, according to an annual report released by Sport England’s National Benchmarking Service (NBS) – but there is still much work to be done to increase usage and widen participation among the most at-need groups.

Delivered by Leisure-net Solutions in partnership with the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) at Sheffield Hallam University, NBS enables local authorities to compare the performance of their sport and leisure facilities with national benchmarks across a number of key performance indicators (KPIs), and to use this information to improve their service delivery.

The 2014 annual report is based on data from 116 centres and takes in 54 KPIs: 12 relating to access (use by target groups), 17 to financial performance, 4 to utilisation (throughput), 20 to customer satisfaction, and a Net Promoter Score.

The findings show a significant upswing in financial performance last year compared with 2013, with improvement across almost all bottom-line indicators, including cost recovery, subsidy per visit and subsidy per square metre.

However, the report concludes that this is largely attributable to the higher proportion of commercial contractors and trusts that participated in NBS last year (79 per cent compared to 64 per cent in 2013), as facilities managed by these groups appear to dramatically out-perform in-house operators in financial terms.

In fact, the report found that even the top-performing 25 per cent of in-house facilities required an average subsidy of £201,725, making them less financially efficient than the bottom-performing 25 per cent of facilities managed by either trusts or commercial contractors, which required subsidies of £153,077 and £105,301 respectively.

In contrast, the top-performing 25 per cent of trust-managed facilities saw an average surplus of £52,845 (all of which is reinvested), while those managed by commercial contractors saw a surplus of £360,344.
Yet despite these disparities in financial performance, facilities managed by all three groups fell short in certain areas of utilisation and access, the report says. Overall, the positive story of improved financial performance is off-set by falling throughput (from 99 visits per square metre of usable space in 2013 to 95 visits per square metre of usable space in 2014), which could be attributed in part to customers on direct debit schemes making infrequent use of their membership.

Furthermore, while the sector is doing a good job of attracting women, 20-59-year-olds and ethnic minorities, it is failing to increase participation among the lowest socio-economic groups, as well as people over 60, disabled people under 60, and 11-19-year-olds.

Martyn Allison, former national advisor for culture and sport with the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and chair of Sport England’s quality scheme Quest (the sister initiative to NBS), said: “The overall improvement in the financial efficiency of leisure centres demonstrated by the NBS report is a great achievement, and should be celebrated, especially given the climate of even greater austerity the sector now faces.

“However, better financial performance is only part of the solution, and should not be at the expense of increasing participation, and in particular extending that participation to hard-to-reach groups. Those sections of the community most likely to benefit from increased physical activity – namely children and young people, older people and poorer people – must not be squeezed out by middle-aged, middle-class and mid- to high-income people who are better able to maintain their engagement and access membership schemes.

“Instead, the industry must work together to find ways to use the commercial returns it is now seeing to achieve better social outcomes, which in turn will build a stronger argument for the continuation of investment.”

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For further information contact:
Rhianon Howells at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 01727 834629
Mob: 07967 551142
Email: rhianon@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk
Editor’s notes:
Quest is the UK quality scheme for sport and leisure. It is a tool for continuous improvement, designed primarily for the management of leisure facilities and leisure development. Quest defines industry standards and good practice, and encourages their ongoing development and delivery within a customer-focused management framework.
The National Benchmarking Service (NBS) provides critical data on the performance of your leisure facility. Leisure-net Solutions, in partnership with the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) at Sheffield Hallam University, works on behalf of Sport England to provide a seamless, rigorous and valuable collection and analysis of participation, financial and customer satisfaction data.
For more information, visit questnbs.org