As recent posts show, there was a growing need and a heightened desire for changes in leisure provision. We decided to explore this desire and present it to the council.
Due to Vivacity handing the operating contract back to the Council on the 18th of June a 90 day transition period ensued which was set to end today. Understandably things have been unclear until the latter stages of this transition period. It seems the plan for sport, leisure and cultural services is as follows.
Facilities were reopened in August, with commercially profitable facilities resuming earliest, including Vivacity Premier. Libraries were reopened from August 10th onwards. Most notably though, the Athletics track reopened on August 17th, with Peterborough and Nene Valley Athletics Club (PANVAC) providing temporary service provision. From now onwards Peterborough City College will manage the operation of libraries services and Aragon Direct services, the council’s in house trading company running remaining leisure services.
This leads us to question who’s interests these decisions are in? Were local people consulted? Do local people understand these decisions, and have their voices been heard? Over August, we attempted to answer some of these questions. Using a survey that was published on community Facebook pages covering Peterborough, we did community consultation. With incomplete responses removed, a random sample of 40 respondents was used to illustrate answers to such questions.
Which leisure services have you used?
What motivates you in your selection of leisure facility
Who would you prefer to run the services that Vivacity hand back to Peterborough City Council?
Do you have anything to raise to the Council or management of Vivacity?
Responses were anonymised and prior to being published on this website and sent to the Council, overviews were sent to all 40 final respondents in the randomised sample.
Vivacity Gyms: 57.50% Vivacity Pools: 70.00% Athletics Track: 40.00% Peterborough Lido: 37.50% Virgin Gym: 2.50% David Lloyd Gym: 10.00% Bannatyne Gym: 17.50% The Gym Group: 7.50% Other, including Tru Gym, Stanground Gym, Elements Gym, Holiday Inn Gym: 17.50%
Here we can see a clear larger number of footfall for leisure facilities that Vivacity were responsible for. Such data only confirms the points raised during our campaign to save these leisure facilities and ensure that their transfer to suitable alternative providers was made securely and with consideration of service users. The following question is also oriented towards customer preference.
Price: 57.50% Variety of Provision: 55.00% Location: 67.00% Community and Social Value: 50.00% Other, only facility type, time: 12.50%
While the options for responses were somewhat limited here, there is another clear illustration that the majority of the sample felt that price, variety and location of leisure services within Peterborough were influential in their choice of leisure facility. This suggests that the price, variety of provision and location of Vivacity services were influential in residents preferring to use such facilities, which would explain why Vivacity’s leisure facilities were more commonly used.
Further to this, half of the sample responded that community and social value were influential in their decisions regarding choosing a leisure provider. This may also explain the popularity of Vivacity’s leisure services as the charity was community centred and reinvested profits back into the organisation. They also employed 500 local people and local people regularly volunteered at their events.
The final closed question we asked the sample was who they would prefer to run facilities that are being handed back to the council.
Peterborough City Council: 32.50% A new Leisure Trust: 42.50% A Community Group or Sport Club: 25.00% A Private Enterprise: 0%
The results here demonstrate a clear preference for a third way of service delivery, wherein the services and facilities are delivered not-for-profit but are not delivered by the Local Authority. This was a particularly interesting piece of data considering the recent fate of Vivacity. The preference of a new Trust may in part be explained by the preference local residents had for Vivacity and the view that the prices, location, and variety of provision at Vivacity facilities influenced resident’s custom there.
So, in conclusion, the City Council have made a decision in line with a large portion of our sample. With 75% of the sample preferring to keep things either in house or with a new non-profit organisation the respondents have shown a similar view to the Council. Aragon Direct Services are the City Council’s trading arm and have been responsible for street cleaning and maintenance across the City. Their suitability to provide leisure management depends on the effectiveness of the transfer of staff from Vivacity. To come, next week the City Council have a full council meeting and these overviews will be shared with them. As well as that, some of the qualitative feedback will be shared and raised as questions for how the Council be delivering services differently. For instance, there was a theme of communication being poor to members, staff and the community. This will be addressed as a question to the Council as well as other issues.
As such I have a question lined up for the upcoming full council meeting, and will share this in the second part of this blog.
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