South Gloucestershire Leisure Trust (The Trust) operates the five leisure centres on behalf of 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.
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 2007/08 and is summarised as follows:
Target 1 - Providing a high quality efficient leisure service with clear and consistent standards
- Key to the performance of the trust sites is their QUEST accredited status and with a group average of 71.25% the trust performs favourably, with a strong focus on facilities management and maintaining satisfactory scores for customer quality.
- There are relatively low levels of customer complaints (732 across the group) however this figure increased marginally (by 0.001 per thousand visits) due to initial teething troubles for the Longwell Green site.
- No figures exist at present for response rates to customer enquiry or complaints therefore a baseline figure will be gathered during 2008/09.
- Customer safety is taken very seriously and there is evidence of the impact of risk assessment and risk reduction practices borne out by a reduction in the number of accidents from 739 to 673 (or 0.046 to 0.039 per thousand).
- Targets for site maintenance have been achieved and this is a key indicator that the terms of the lease are being maintained.
- Targets for staff development have also been achieved with a full induction provided for all new appointments, and with all staff receiving a personal performance review linked to the annual review of group training needs.
- IIP status was revoked when it was externalised from council in 2005 and this measure will lie dormant until the capacity to commit resources to an application.
Target 2 - Providing open access to leisure services
- The increase in attendance of 145,000 people from 1.57 million in 2007 to 1.72 million includes a predicted migration of approximately 60,000 swimmers to the new Longwell Green site.
- There has been a significant increase in attendance by ‘leisure saver’ customers and this increased access will be further extended through the implementation of the Active Card in late 2008.
Target 3 - Continually reviewing and improving services
- Key positive outcomes of the Customer Satisfaction Survey were that customers were reasonably satisfied with the availability, condition and cleanliness of equipment used, the level of customer service received and the attitude of the centre staff.
- Key negative outcomes of the survey include concerns over site cleanliness, poor website awareness and content and response time for telephone calls.
- The trust has subsequently invested in both customer services systems and personnel to cope with high call volumes and levels of front of house customer sales and enquiry.