Agenda item

To consider a report by the General Manager, One Leisure.

(Members of the Overview & Scrutiny Panel (Social Well-Being) have been invited to attend for the discussion on this item).

(Councillor T D Sanderson, Executive Councillor for Healthy and Active Communities, was in attendance for this item).

With the assistance of a report by the General Manager, One Leisure (a copy of which is appended in the annex to the Minute Book) the Panel considered the contents of a proposed Business Plan for One Leisure and options for restructuring the existing staffing arrangements. Partway through the discussion, a detailed action plan was circulated outlining a timetable for completion of ten priority actions within the Plan.

Following an introduction by the Executive Councillor, the Panel discussed the contents of the draft Plan in detail.  In terms of the objectives within the document, Members were of the view that the Plan’s fundamental orientation needed to change so that it reflected One Leisure’s total costs. To this end, Members recommended that the Executive Councillor for Healthy and Active Communities should arrange for the Plan to be developed to include the service’s revenue position together with its capital and maintenance costs and the recharges it incurred. Members were of the opinion that the Plan’s objectives should be reviewed so that there was a clear financial target and they identified which services were in competition with other providers, those which were solely provided by One Leisure and those which were provided through collaboration or by others.

With regard to the presentation of data, Members commented that the existing figures needed to be revised to ensure that they were consistent. It was suggested that it would also be necessary to produce trading statements for individual / small groups of services, with revenue projections over a longer period of time to reflect the savings which had been identified. Generally, the Plan should include more detailed figures for individual and collective services coupled with defined timescales.

In terms of the contents of the report, questions were raised on a number of matters including the impact of changes to primary school funding arrangements, the need to compete when there were other local providers, whether the Council should establish a set amount of funding for public health initiatives and the level of savings which could be achieved in NNDR from putting the service into a trust. Clarification was also sought on the longer term action required to expand the One Leisure Business and it was suggested that some of the costings did not reflect predicted energy costs.

In terms of the options for the staff structure contained in Appendix A to the report, Members were of the opinion that they were unable to express a view without more detailed job descriptions and that further information was required on both the service impacts of the various options before such a decision was made.

The Panel was of the view that there was considerable scope for savings to be made within the One Leisure Service and that it should make whatever savings it could that did not have an impact on services at the earliest possible opportunity. This work should commence with the ‘big ticket’ items and include a review of recharges, the outcome of which the Panel would be interested to see. Savings that did have an impact on services should be included in the Business Plan to enable Members to consider them.

In concluding their discussion on the item, Members drew attention to the considerable achievements that had been made in improving controllable income and expenditure and they congratulated the General Manager, One Leisure and his staff on these achievements. However, the Panel did not recommend that the One Leisure Business Plan should be adopted in its current form as further work was required to develop it. This should not preclude work from being undertaken to identify and implement savings that did not have an impact on services at the earliest opportunity.

With regard to the study into the One Leisure business model, the Panel agreed to consider the question of whether to pursue this study at a future meeting.

RESOLVED

  that the Cabinet be invited to consider the comments and suggestions outlined above as part of its deliberations on this item.