To receive a verbal update on the Leisure Service.
Minutes:
The Group received a verbal update from the Operations Manager for Leisure Service regarding current activity within the Leisure Services area.
This included the following information:
· The Leisure Service was currently seeing it’s highest ever membership base and was working hard on retention campaigns, customer and community engagement. Managers had clear objectives and were cascading these and the priorities for the service through the wider team as part of the appraisal process.
· Despite the positive increase in revenue, the team were in the midst of some significant challenges with staffing, particularly the swimming pools, where day time cover during the week was proving problematic. It was to the credit of the Duty Officers and Centre Managers that the impact of the shortage was not being more widely felt. Recruitment and training was an ongoing priority.
· There had been some changes to the Management Team with a new Centre Manager for Exe Valley and Culm Valley starting soon, and a new Duty Officer starting in early December 2024.
· In the community the Leisure Service were working with Active Devon to provide ‘wellbeing walks’ in Tiverton, Crediton and Cullumpton, those would be led by volunteers and be completely free of charge. This reinforced Leisure’s commitment to providing accessible health and wellbeing for all members of the community.
· Another community driven project was with the NHS. Within the Royal Devon & Exeter area they had several community sites which retained small patient gym spaces. These were both for musculoskeletal problems (e.g back pain, knee pain etc) and wider health conditions (e.g stroke, amputees, cancer etc.) An NHS England drive was to provide care closer to home, and within local communities (vs large hospital sites). With this in mind, Leisure had donated two studio cycling bikes to be used in these community sites, again strengthening the Council’s collaboration and showing how it valued the health of its communities.
· There were some significant projects coming to fruition in the coming months. The digital transformation had started with the Leisure Management System contract being awarded which would be the start of a major improvement to the way in which the service operated, offering it valuable reporting tools and dashboards to help it improve timetabling and run a more efficient service.
· Culm Valley gym, studio and squash court refreshes were underway and would greatly enhance the user experience, bringing the facility up to a more contemporary standard.
· The swimming pool sites would see a refurbishment of the wet-side changing rooms in March 2025 and the team were working on logistics of this to minimise the impact of the work, and to ensure a quality finish consistent at both sites.
· Despite the challenging resource issues, the leisure team had made some major steps forward with the service with more to come and would welcome anyone who would like to visit the sites and have a chat with the Management Team to get in touch.
Discussion took place with regard to:
· The Chair commented that the Culm Valley gym was looking ‘fantastic’ following the recent refurbishment.
· The Operations Manager would be looking to seek out volunteers to help with possible park runs in the future.
· The service was looking to strengthen partnership relationships in the future with regard to providing support in the mental health area. There were lots of things the Leisure Service were already doing but they had yet to be pulled together into a formalised framework.
The Chair thanked the officer for his helpful update.