A new leisure facility in Central Park has been a strategic and political ambition of Plymouth City Council (PCC) for some time. An Audit Commission inspection highlighted the need for urgent investment stating that the Council's leisure service and leisure facilities were ‘poor’ with ‘uncertain prospects for improvement’.

Therefore, PCC's overarching strategy has been to address the issues around the two existing leisure facilities located in the park, Central Park Pools and the Mayflower Centre. Both facilities are now over 35 years old respectively and in need of significant investment just to maintain a basic level of service.

The Council developed a vision for the new Plymouth Life Centre (PLC) which was ‘to create an outstanding venue of regional significance for sport, recreation and leisure, and to strengthen Central Park’s position as the city’s premier park for all residents and visitors to enjoy.’ This vision for the Plymouth Life Centre was fully supported by all the political parties and PCC partners. To progress this vision, PCC decided in July 2005, in partnership with the University of Plymouth, the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth Argyle Football Club, Plymouth Sports Forum and the Primary Care Trust appointed external consultants to develop an ‘Outline Business Case’ for the Plymouth Park Life Centre located in the Central Park in Plymouth.

From this business case PCC committed to the project the necessary funds and sought contributions from various Nationals Governing Bodies (e.g. British Swimming, Sport England, England Netball) in order to deliver the facility.

The estimated capital funding for this project was circa £46.5m. Of this total Plymouth University contributed £2.5 million and Sport England supported the scheme with a grant of £1.99 million through its Sustainable Facilities Fund. A number of NGB's also contributed; England Netball invested £200,000 and the Amateur Swimming Association awarded £40,000 to support water polo at the centre. Agreements have also been signed with English Squash and Racketball and the English Table Tennis Association to promote and develop these sports in the City. The Council funded the balance from reserves and where appropriate Prudential Borrowing.

The Council realised that in the current and recent economic that the only way to realise their vision was to commit to the development of the facility and not to rely on other diminishing funding sources.

PCC decided at an early stage to separate the procurement the construction of the facility and the procurement of an operator to manage the Plymouth Life centre. There are a number of factors that went into the ultimate decision e.g.

By appointing the architect, project managers and construction company the Council could have more control of the outcomes.

The Council had a clear strategy and idea of the facility mix therefore the need to use the market to determine these was not necessary i.e. Design, Build, Fund and operate (DBFO) or Design, Build Operate and Maintain (DBOM).

The Council was funding the entire project.

As identified previously, Balfour Beatty were appointed to construct the facility designed by Archial Architects.

The Council had a strategy in terms of the procurement processes to be pursued for both the construction and operator contracts. For the operation of the Plymouth Life Centre the Council decided that as a result of the outline business case, that the new facility should be managed by an external operator primarily to access NNDR and possibly VAT benefits available to certain operators. The contract and procurement process also included all council leisure facilities.

This was important as there was a need to secure a long-term sustainable solution to the revenue aspects of the project.

To achieve this, the Council decided that due to the importance of the new facility that the most appropriate route for the procurement of a new operator would be via the Competitive Dialogue Procedure (CDP). This process would allow for dialogue with the potential operators to fine tune the operation and would ensure that the successful operator would completely understand the Council's vision for the service.

The process was long and resource hungry with the Council appointing specialist consultants (Strategic Leisure) and external legal advisers to assist them with the process. A number of stages were identified and after the selection of a shortlist of operators, dialogue meetings were had with each shortlisted company over a number of months in order to fine tune their solution for service delivery. Each stage was evaluated against set criteria and the shortlist reduced at each stage.

The selection of the preferred bidder was as a result of Final Tenders being received from two bidders SERCO Leisure and SLM. SLM were selected as the preferred bidder for a ten-year contract to manage the Plymouth Life Centre.

The process from the original decision in 2005 to completion of the build and handover to the new external operator will have taken nearly 7 years. Whilst this seems a long time, consideration need to be given to the development of initial feasibility, coordination of all stakeholders, the development of the outline business case and facility strategy, the twin tracked procurement process (Build and Operator), the complexity of the largest leisure centre build outside the Olympic site and that because all facilities (except those that closed as part of the new facility development) will transfer to the new operator.

Because all facilities were to transfer this had its own complexities as it meant the coordination of the transfer of staff from 4 organisations into one new organisation, three leisure trusts and PCC's leisure staff.

The operator procurement process, due to the use of CDP, took longer than anticipated as each stage had to be developed, evaluated and refined. The overall process from advert to award took approximately 24 months i.e. from April 2009 to April 2011.

This was a complex and time-consuming project. The Council was very thorough in their approach and issues such as policy and document development took some time to refine.

The CDP is not one welcomed by the leisure market. It has its place in complex projects where the local authority does not have a clear strategy or vision for what they want. In circumstances where the local authority has a clear strategy and separates out the operator form the build contract, then the use of the CDP is unnecessary and cumbersome if the aspiration is to have an all-encompassing project including the design, build possibly funding and operation of the facility then there are arguments for the CDP to be used as a council may have limited internal resources.

In Plymouth where the procurement of an operator was separate from the build contract, the Council will admit that the CDP was probably not the process they should have used, however it has produced a result which was within the Council's affordability level and with a leading leisure operator.