Bringing Southwark’s leisure facilities in-house was a big gamble but it could just pay off.
Southwark Council first announced plans to insource leisure services in 2021. Its contract with Everyone Active was set to expire in two years ‘time and few people saw it coming.
Local authorities use private contractors for all sorts of services but, in this case, the council had concluded it just wasn’t worth it. In June 2020, this paper reported that Everyone Active had received a £1.2 million bailout from the council after leisure centres were forced to close during lockdown.
It wasn’t just the pandemic which gave the council a fresh perspective on things. Even before the pandemic, the council was finding that the rise of ‘budget’ gyms was eating into Southwark Leisure’s profits.
Centralising leisure has been a mammoth task and will inevitably be costly. 437 employees have had to move to council contracts, £815,000 has already been spent on site investment, and £8 million is available for improving assets over the next four years.
However, the early signs seem to suggest things are going well. Since Southwark Council took over in June 2023, the number of paying leisure members has increased from roughly 20,475 to 23,115.
Registered free swim members have risen from 30,261 to 45, 162 and there’s been a 24 per cent increase in children taking up weekly swimming lessons. In such a short space of time, these numbers are impressive.
There is a caveat and, unsurprisingly, it’s to do with money. At the Audit, Governance and Standards Committee earlier this month, Cllr Simmons asked how much Southwark was spending on leisure compared to other boroughs.
The officer didn’t give any exact figures and instead said the council was spending “more on leisure”. The officer also said harmonisation of staff into the council cohort would “cost more” – again leaving out specific figures.
When we asked Southwark Council exactly how much more was being spent on leisure compared to when it was being contracted out, the council only said the current net budget was £4.926 million without saying what that budget was before.
This makes it difficult for both councillors and we, the press, to scrutinise insourcing. In the long term, Southwark says investing in its leisure centres will save money. This may well be true but in, the meantime, transparency is paramount.
Nonetheless, this represents an exciting opportunity for the borough. In-sourcing isn’t always the solution, especially at a time when cash-strapped councils are already struggling to provide basic services.
But if bringing leisure in-house makes the borough’s facilities more accessible to Southwark residents, while avoiding costly emergency bail-outs, it could prove a clever move.