Circadian Trust operates the five leisure centres and three dual use (school based) sports facilities in partnership with South Gloucestershire Council.
The Trust outlined its strategic direction in a five year service development strategy in October 2006 following consultation with council and establishing clear links with the Council’s Physical Activity and Sportsplan. In 2011 the Trust is now in the process of reviewing the strategy in conjunction with key partners.
Highlights for 2010 – 2011 include:
- The performance of Bradley Stoke and Yate Leisure Centres in their quality accreditation visit which saw overall scores rise from 75% to 82% and from 76% to 81% respectively.
- The start of a £3 million refurbishment of Kingswood Leisure centre which
will run until November.
- The completion of the £250k refurbishment of changing rooms at Thornbury Leisure centre as well as Cafeteria and Gym refurbishments at this facility.
- Energy consumption for the final quarter of 2010 – 2011 has shown a year on year reduction in consumption for electricity (-15%), gas (-11%), and water (-6%). This is
excellent news for South Gloucestershire’s carbon footprint.
Monitoring arrangements
A strong relationship exists between council and trust and this is represented in the adoption of a cooperative approach to performance monitoring undertaken by the Leisure Client Team (The Team). The team comprises of two officers employed by South Gloucestershire Council. One officer has responsibility for programming, sports development, pricing & concessions, cleanliness, customer relations and the other has responsibility for building lease issues, the capital programme and capital projects. Monitoring activity is a combination of formalised and ad-hoc measures, with the findings presented to the quarterly Trust Liaison Team meeting and the subject of an annual report to council.
Formal monitoring:
- Six-monthly site inspections
- Quarterly performance review against targets
- Use of the performance monitoring software (PB Views) to demonstrate in visual format
Informal monitoring:
- Ad-hoc site visits on other council business
- Telephone calls to trust staff
- Inclusion within circulation list on formal complaints and requests for information
- Freespace scheme feedback
Performance
The three key performance targets on which the trust is measured are:
- Providing a high quality efficient leisure service with clear and consistent standards
- Providing open access to leisure services
- Continually reviewing and improving services
The trust has performed well against the targets set for 2010/11 and is summarised as follows:
Target 1 - Providing a high quality efficient leisure service with clear and consistent standards
- Circadian Trust has continually improved the quality of its offering to South Gloucestershire’s residents, and continues to be ranked in the top 20% of Quest* scorers in the UK.
- The current mean score of 74.6% across the five leisure centres is a 4.6% increase on the previous period.
- Particularly notable was an increase in Bradley Stoke’s overall score from 75% to 82% in December 2010, and Yate increasing from 76% to 81% in January 2011.
*QUEST is a national quality management benchmark for leisure providers.
- There has been a significant drop in the number of complaints received and customer satisfaction is shown to be on the increase with an improved future needs survey and more effective comment system also in place.
Target 2 - Providing open access to leisure services
- The leisure centres are being used significantly more this year, with annual attendances increasing by 162,000 to just under 2million.
Target 3 - Continually reviewing and improving services
- The leisure centre operation is being continually reviewed on a number of levels;
- internally - through integrated quality management processes where for example, the front of house operation now links directly to maintenance reporting this means that things are repaired more promptly and so customers enjoy a better experience.
- externally – by improving the customer comment and feedback systems, and by implementing a future customer needs survey, the Trust can stay ahead of the game and tailor its programmes to customer needs.