Reading Council 2005

The Brief

Reading’s is the county town of Berkshire and is strategically place in the M4 corridor within close proximity to London and Heathrow Airport. It is a hub of high-tech business parks, with many international companies such as Microsoft and BG Group with their headquarters there. Reading is also a major retail centre, with a thriving evening economy. It is a large, busy, prosperous town and draws people in from miles around for employment, education, shopping, and entertainment.

The Council’s facility strategy (developed with Strategic Leisure) identifies an investment and strategic direction for the Council’s seven leisure facilities. The initial stage of the strategy was to test the market for the South Reading and Rivermead leisure facilities. This market test was to identify revenue savings, provide investment into essential and desirable capital projects and to provide long term sustainability for the service.

The Council approached Strategic Leisure to assist them in delivering their stated objectives. The brief was to develop the procurement strategy, develop tender documents and manage the procurement process.

Our Approach

The procurement process was managed entirely by Strategic Leisure. One of the Council’s objectives was to 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. 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a preferred partner Greenwich leisure Ltd to manage the Rivermead leisure facility ( the South reading facility was withdrawn for the process and transferred to Reading Football club as part of the football academy) who met the Council’s revenue, capital and service objectives. A key element was the use of the then recently introduced Prudential Borrowing powers. The Council invested the capital (up to £4.5m), using a business case developed by Strategic Leisure, funded through the tax based and income improvements implemented by Greenwich Leisure.

Greenwich Leisure Ltd was identified as the Council’s preferred partner 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

• Investment of up to £4.5m

• A performance management framework based upon a balanced scorecard for the future measurement of the performance of the service