Significant drop in the use of sports facilities
Council officials waylaid by drawing up new tender
Time spent by managers on Stirling Council’s sports contract tendering fiasco has been blamed for a drop in the use of the authority’s facilities.
The council’s community planning and regeneration committee heard last week that attendances at indoor sport and leisure facilities for the beginning of January until the end of March this year dropped from 3295 for every 1000 people in the area last year to 2361 for the same period this year.
Figures for attendances at swimming pools in the Stirling Council area, which are calculated separately, dropped from 887 to 817 for every 1000 people.
Council officials told committee members the drop was down to the Active Stirling team having to concentrate on drawing up a new tender.
The arms-length not-for-profit trust had already bid last year for sports facilities they had run for 11 years, running up a bill of almost £90,000 in the process, after the then Tory-Labour administration of the council approved the services being put out to tender.
SNP councillors had argued there was no need for the move as it risked allowing the service to be taken over by a private firm, but council officials claimed it was the only way to achieve best value for the contract, worth more than £1 million a year.
In February, following an evaluation of the bids, officers recommended awarding the 25-year, £25million contract to a private firm, however the prospect caused outrage with trades unions and sparked an 1800-signature public petition in support of Active Stirling.
Councillors then unanimously decided not to award the contract to the private firm, and instead agreed to work towards setting up a Stirling-based charitable trust to run the services.
At the commmittee meeting on Thursday, council officials said: “January to March 2017 was the first new year period in over five years where Active Stirling have not run a dedicated membership sales and retention campaign to encourage new users and increase visit frequency during this traditionally receptive time of year.
“The reason Active Stirling did not run a focused campaign in that period was attributable to prioritising and management and support team resources on completing the contract tendering exercise for sport and physical activity.
“The subsequent reallocation of resource and lack of implementation of a bespoke campaign had a detrimental effect on swimmer and general indoor use participation as both areas comprise key components in our ALL IN membership packages.”
Councillor Maureen Bennison asked if the issues had been resolved and when numbers were expected to improve.
Officials said: “We are still looking at taking forward a decision in terms of leisure services to council so it is not fully resolved, however the pressure on Active Stirling in terms of their involvement in the process is minimal now so we would expect to see an improvement.”
Chair Councillor Chris Kane, however, suggested the figure was more of a “blip”, pointing out that leap in the quarterly figure from 2443 in 2014/15 to 3295 in 2015/16 had been particularly high.
Officials said the jump had been down to the introduction of the ALL IN membership.