The Council’s main priority for the partnership was to improve the revenue position for the service, realise investment in the facilities and to improve in customer satisfaction.

Strategic Leisure’s Approach

Strategic Leisure project managed the entire externalisation process with assistance from the Council’s appointed legal advisers, Leonie Cowen and Associates. This included developing the strategic direction, to advertising for expressions of interests, to developing the partnership framework and documentation, evaluation of the tender submissions and finally managing the detailed negotiations with the preferred partner.

This project was particularly complex with various stakeholder organisations involved (County Borough and Town Councils), a mixture of Council owned and Joint Use facilities, complex Human Resource issues to resolve, investment required in the facilities (funded by the Council) and the possibility in a rationalisation of the facilities in line with the Council’s facility strategy sometime in the future.

SLL’s approach is based on our established Best Value Procurement Framework. This approach is tried and tested and has successfully delivered more best value procurement projects than any other consultancy. This approach delivers real benefits to the Council and is directly referenced to best practice and national standards. The approach is based on the principles of best value and best practice (TaES), has been developed specifically for the sport and leisure market and reflects the specific outcomes for each individual local authority.