The brief

Bristol City Council historically provide fourteen leisure facilities, nine swimming pools and four ‘dry’ only sports centres across the City. These facilities were operated up to February 2005 by a local Industrial and Provident Society.

A best value inspection carried out by the Audit Commission was highly critical of the sports service rating it ‘poor with uncertain prospects for improvement’. Many of the facilities were showing signs of age and are in need of capital investment or rationalisation to keep them in tune with rising customer expectations. In recognition of the need to radically alter and improve its sports facility portfolio, the Council has allocated some £13m capital funding and embarked on a rationalisation process resulting in five core facilities and three non core facilities. The non core sites were targeted to be replaced when a new PFI facility is completed in 2010.

For a variety of reasons the trust ceased trading in February 2005 and the Council was forced to take the service in house whilst a procurement process was undertaken. The consequences of these factors have resulted in the Council developing a clear strategy for the service and that the procurement of a leisure operator is part of the overall plan.

Our Approach

The procurement process was managed entirely by Strategic Leisure which due to the size of the portfolio and other factors made this procurement exercise particularly complex. Like the majority of leisure procurement exercises the main issues were about staff and property. One of the Council’s objectives was to reverse the trend in previous years of deteriorating facilities and guarantee investment over the longer term. This resulted in a significant transfer of risk to the new operator for a period of up to 15 years. Additional complexities were based on the staff transferring back to the Council from the trust for a period of about a year and subsequently transferring to a new operator. There were numerous TUPE and Code on Workforce matters to resolve as part of the process.

In keeping with the principles of Best Value, Strategic Leisure’s advice was for the Council to adopt a modern partnership approach based upon shared vision and objectives. The Council embraced this strategy and modern partnership principles were used to develop the partnership documentation. The documentation recognised the shared principles required for a true partnership to work successfully. The main principle was that the approach recommended by Strategic Leisure was to be based on Towards and Excellent Service (TAES) and achievement of specific Council objectives.

Project Outcomes

The procurement process and subsequent evaluation identified a preferred partner SLM Ltd who met the Council’s financial and service objectives. This partner was identified following a robust evaluation based upon the Economy, Effectiveness and Efficiency of each submission.

The result has realised significant benefits for the Council, in summary these are;

• A long-term sustainable solution for the leisure centre service for up to 15 years
• An affordable revenue solution within the Councils allocated budget
• A partner that shares the Council’s vision and Partnership commitment
• Additional investment over an above that supplied by the Council
• A performance management framework based upon a balanced scorecard for the future measurement of the performance of the service

A significant transfer of risk from the Council to the new Partner. Specifically a full repairing obligation on the Partner for the five Core facilities