2020/21 performance review of Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL)

Recommendation

That the Joint Scrutiny Committee considers Greenwich Leisure Limited’s (GLL) performance in delivering the joint leisure management contract for the period 2020/21 and makes any comments before a final assessment on performance is made by Cabinet Members with responsibility for Leisure by way of an individual Cabinet Member Decision for both councils.

Purpose of Report

1. The report and its format are based on the council’s performance review of contractor’s template and considers the performance of GLL in providing the joint leisure management service in South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse for the period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021. This is the sixth report of the joint contract which started on 1 September 2014.

Strategic Objectives

2. The review of GLL helps ensure that the councils achieve their strategic objectives in the following areas:

· South aims to ‘focus on a sustainable recovery that prioritises community well-being and resilience as well as economic prosperity’.

· Vale of White Horse aims to ‘help build and support thriving local communities, where everyone can enjoy the opportunity to live a happy and fulfilling life’ and ‘ensure that our council and our district play their part in tackling the Climate Emergency’.

Background

3. Managing contractor performance is essential for delivering the South and Vale objectives and targets. The council’s leisure services are outsourced meaning the authority has an established process in place of working with contractors to deliver these services. Working jointly with contractors to review performance regularly is essential in delivering high quality services to residents.

4. The councils’ process for managing contractor performance focuses on continuous improvement and action planning. The councils realise that the success of the framework depends on contractors and the councils working together to set and review realistic, jointly agreed, and measurable targets.

5. The overall framework is designed to be:

· a consistent way for the councils to measure contractor performance, to help highlight and resolve operational issues

· flexible enough to suit each contract, including smaller contracts which may not require all elements of the framework

· a step towards managing risk more effectively and improving performance through action planning.

Overview of the Review Framework

6. The review process usually consists of three essential dimensions:

· performance measured against key performance targets (KPTs)

· customer satisfaction with the total service experience

· council satisfaction as client.

7. Each dimension is assessed by officers and the head of service makes a judgement of classification. Contractor feedback and an assessment of strengths and areas for improvement are included. The framework may be adjusted or simplified at the discretion of the head of service, where some dimensions are not relevant or difficult to apply fairly.

8. This contract is the first joint leisure contract and runs from 1 September 2014 until 31 August 2024. GLL provides a comprehensive programme of activities and opportunities for residents and visitors to both districts to enjoy sporting and leisure facilities. GLL operates facilities in Berinsfield, Didcot, Henley, Thame, Wallingford and Wheatley in South Oxfordshire, and Abingdon, Wantage and Faringdon in the Vale within an agreed management contract and a service specification document.

9. The main deliverables within the contract are to:

· increase participation in the council’s leisure facilities and participation outreach programmes

· provide a varied programme of activities to cater for different age groups and preferences.

· provide a minimum income from each of the remaining years of the contract of £159,089.40 to South Oxfordshire which has reduced and £1,138,136.40 to the Vale which remains unchanged.

10. The figure for South Oxfordshire was reduced from £411,278.76 following contract renegotiations. This was due to the council having to operate the Didcot Wave and Didcot Leisure Centres beyond 2018, when it was anticipated a new leisure centre would have been operational replacing both of those older facilities. This was approved by Cabinet and Council as part of the council’s budget setting process for 2018/19.

11. The table below shows GLL’s performance for the previous and current year. The scores are as follows:

Performance Dimensions	2019/2020	2020/2021
Key Performance Targets	Good	N/A
Customer Satisfaction	Excellent	N/A
Council Satisfaction	Fair	Weak
Overall Score	Good	Weak

COVID-19 IMPACT ON CONTRACT PERFORMANCE AND DELIVERY

12. GLL made a relatively good start to the reporting year however the Covid-19 pandemic impacted contract delivery and created a significant economic and financial impact across the whole leisure sector. The impact of the pandemic will have an ongoing effect on the industry through operational restrictions and the reduction of demand in customer confidence due to the changing climate experienced.

13. On the 20 March 2020, Central Government required providers of leisure facilities to close as part of their response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Leisure centres across the country as a result closed for a duration of 8 months out of the past 12 for the reporting year.

14. GLL immediately complied with the lockdown and closure of the leisure centres across both South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse District Councils. The closedown plans for the facilities outlined what GLL had to do to ensure leisure centres were safely closed in line with Central Government requirements. The council was provided with Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and Business Recovery Plans (BRP) as part of the control and revival throughout the pandemic.

15. The BRP focused on what the Leisure offer would be following re-opening and how the new way of working with the restrictions that were imposed could be delivered, and to enable full and timely recovery once surfacing from the impact of Covid-19.

16. GLL, along with all leisure operators, have been advised and guided by Central Government and national leisure bodies, such as UKActive, Sport England, Swim England in its re-opening and providing Covid-19 secure operations.

17. The re-opening of leisure centres across South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse District Councils reflected a very restricted core offering due to the Covid restrictions that had been enforced. This impacted the programme delivery and offering at all leisure centres and also preventing some services within the facilities to reopen.

18. The Covid-19 restrictions imposed and potential regulations that may be compulsory in the future, have had a large impact on customer behaviour coupled with customer affordability due to external pressures. Loss of jobs and household incomes leaves a significant risk on the leisure industry which tends to be tied into the category of secondary spend with everyday savings being the current norm.

19. The Council negotiated a Covid-19 Leisure Support Package which was part agreed with GLL in line with the Government’s Procurement Policy Notice, and reflects the terms of the Local Government Sales, Fees and Charges Compensation Scheme, National Leisure Recovery Fund, and Clause 38 of the joint contract.

20. The current joint contract allows for a five-year contract extension until August 2029. The councils supported a ‘without prejudice’ two-year contract extension to August 2026, with a break clause exercisable by, and at the discretion of, the Councils at the original contract end date (August 2024), with the option for a further three-year extension, until August 2029. The GLL Support Package is yet to be agreed within this financial reporting year.

21. Through the Government Sales, Fees and Charges Compensation Scheme, the councils recovered 75 per cent of 95 per cent of the 2020/2021 management fee payments. The scheme will also be available for management fees for April to June 2021. Assuming it is successful in recovering the lost income from the scheme, the councils will be entitled to and will seek to recover the remaining management fee due from GLL in later years and for 2020/21 and 2021/22.

Dimension 1 – Key performance targets (KPT)

22. The impact on the closure significantly affected the delivery of the set KPT’s under Dimension 1. The scoring reflected around the delivery of the KPT’s are all reliant on customers accessing the leisure centres and taking part in the activities on offer.

23. Due to the pandemic and furlough of significant staff during an unsettled year it was impossible for Officers to collate data from GLL on the delivery of Dimension 1 during the restrictions set across the whole of the UK.

24. The KPT’s set are agreed each contract delivery year however the pandemic has rendered the scoring unachievable due to the closures. The set criteria for the KPT’s can be seen in the report as a guidance without figures achieved.

25. This contract has fourteen KPTs. These KPTs were compiled in 2013 by a joint working group of scrutiny committee members at the time of drawing up the contract documentation and officers from the leisure and corporate strategy teams. The KPTs consider areas of shared importance to elected members and officers in reporting on the contractor’s performance. The KPTs would be reported to cabinet members and senior officers on a quarterly basis so areas of success and concern can be discussed in a timely way.

KPT ref	Description of KPT	Target	Performance	Individual KPT rating (excellent, good, fair, weak or poor)	KPT rating score (excellent = 5, good = 4, fair = 3, weak = 2, poor = 1)
KPT 1	Increased total visits year on year	>3%
KPT 2	Increased total activity visits year on year	>4%
KPT 3	Increased year on year growth of inclusive membership (disabled pre-paid)	>10%
KPT 4	Increased year on year growth of concessionary leisure card holders (pay and play)	>1.5%
KPT 5	Attrition (prepaid memberships only gym, swim etc. not swim school)	<6.5%
KPT 6	Average length of stay, direct debit members (excluding swim school)	> 13mnths
KPT 7	Reduce customer complaints to Councils	<60
KPT 8	Percentage of bookings made online	>70%
KPT 9	Percentage of referrals completing Healthwise programme (GP referral)	>70%
KPT 10	Conversion rate from Healthwise programme to Healthwise membership	>65%
KPT 11	Decreased year on year energy usage (electricity) Kwh per visit	>4%
KPT 12	Decreased year on year energy usage (gas) Kwh per visit	>5%
KPT 13	Decreased year on year energy usage (water) cubic meters per visit	>10%
KPT 14	Annual user satisfaction survey
	Overall “average” KPT performance rating score (arithmetic average)				N/A
	Overall “average” KPT performance (excellent, good, fair, weak or poor)				N/A

Score	<3.0	3.0 – 3.399	3.4 – 3.899	3.9 – 4.299	4.3 – 5.0
Classification	Poor	Weak	Fair	Good	Excellent

26. Based on this performance, the head of service would make a judgement on KPT performance as not reportable due to the circumstances out of the local authority’s control:

KPT judgement

N/A

Previous KPT judgement for comparison

Good

Dimension 2 – Customer satisfaction

27. Customer Survey completion under Dimension 2. The closure of the facilities rendered the scoring card for these mechanisms of contract delivery as unachievable.

28. GLL would have carried out and analysed customer satisfaction surveys during 2020/21. Details of the questions asked are attached as Annex A of this report. Unfortunately, the face to face interaction and completion of the surveys were not possible due to the pandemic and restrictions imposed.

29. A reflection on the scoring and feedback from customers would be used to summarise scoring as below and the head of service would make a judgement on the score achieved.

Score	<3.0	3.0 – 3.399	3.4 – 3.899	3.9 – 4.299	4.3 – 5.0
Classification	Poor	Weak	Fair	Good	Excellent

30. Based on this performance, the head of service would make a judgement on KPT performance as not reportable due to the circumstances out of the local authority’s control:

Customer satisfaction judgement

N/A

Previous customer satisfaction judgement for comparison

Excellent

Dimension 3 – Council satisfaction

31. Five officers associated with the contract have commented on the council’s satisfaction with the delivery of the contract during 2020/21 – the combined scores are listed in Annex C.

32. Unfortunately, officers from the Participation Team in Active Communities were unable to score due to no engagement with GLL during the lockdown year.

33. This is now the seventh year in the reporting cycle and both GLL and council officers have continued to develop and make improvements to the delivery of the service.

34. Officers identified that the quality of the relationship and partnership between Council officers and GLL has unfortunately dropped in the reporting year to ‘Weak’. Centre managers and the Partnership managers have had a difficult year with the pandemic either by being placed on furlough or picking up general day to day operation. Officers found it very difficult to communicate with front line staff during the restrictions and had to be reflective in the scoring.

35. Staff remain very approachable and willing to help in all situations although the speed in which responses are provided have been somewhat lacking due to pressures outside of their control from Head Office.

36. Monitoring levels been varied throughout the year with leisure centres being closed, and theses have been taking place when Covid Secure measures allowed. Officers had notified GLL of their visits during the contract year due to the ‘track and trace’ requirements. These would normally be conducted by unannounced visits.

37. Areas for significant improvement continues to be the GLL website in terms of ease of navigation and accuracy of information. The navigation of the website has been worse over the contract year with Officers having to comment on errors, systems not being updated and inaccurate messages on the website to residents.

38. Issues with the website have resulted in increased calls from residents as a result of not being able to contact the leisure centres directly. The significant lack in responses from GLL has left Officers having to continuously pick up responding to residents along with their frustration in the lack of service being provided.

39. During the pandemic GLL reverted all their communication channels for residents via the Better Application and their Head Office. Authorisation to change this service from the contract specification had not been given by the council throughout this process although understandable given the furlough and protection of business revenue being paramount to GLL. This service was operated by a Customer Experience Department (CED) to align all enquiries and complaints by a centralised system. Officers experienced numerous issues and handled many complaints by residents direct to the council Active Communities Team due to the CED service either experiencing high levels of calls (without an automated message leaving service) or simply not being able to get through on the phone. It was noted that GLL have tried on many occasions to improve the handling of calls, but experiences have shown there has be little to no improvement on this provision to residents.

40. The Computer Aided Facility Management system (CAFM) is a concern. This facility is there for GLL to report all their general repairs and maintenance items and Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM). Officers have had to raise on numerous occasions the lack of use of the system. This has in turn caused more Officer time to question the history of items that need rectification rather than simply viewing an update via the CAFM system. There have been changes in the Management team, and the furlough of the Area Facilities Manager. This recent change saw a significant drop in the active use of the CAFM by GLL, and the Officers have had to raise issue on several occasions to question the use of the system. Concerns are that there seems to be a lack of items being raised by GLL on the CAFM system, and where they are these have been added from the Officers audit where the council have highlighted an item to be rectified and not their own.

41. PPM records have been missing on numerous occasions and have resulted in Officers requesting for this to be updated. When records are within the system there have been times Officers have had to request updates on the remedial action being completed.

42. The council’s client team carry out performance monitoring visits to ensure that the services provided by GLL are in accordance with the contract agreement. The table in Annex F shows the scores achieved between September 2021 to October 2021 giving an average score between those two months of operation (Covid-19 prevented a full suite of audits being completed throughout the reporting year). This resulted in a reduction of 1.3 per cent over the year from an average of 91.4 per cent in 2020 to 90.1 per cent in 2020. It must be noted in Annex F the lack of centres audited and covered over the year due to the pandemic and access to leisure facilities. Overall, it has been noticed by Officers a deterioration in some centres and approaches to reactive maintenance. Disappointingly this has resulted in a slight drop in score.

43. As part of the contract there has been a significant investment to the reduction of the leisure centres’ carbon footprints and to reduce energy consumption. In the reporting year GLL and the council introduced LED lighting at Thame LC dry side toilets and creche, Didcot Wave Gym. Further improvements will be reported in the future reporting year as access has been restricted this year due to the pandemic.

44. GLL’s community team would have continued to work with the Active Communities Participation Team however the pandemic immediately prevented this engagement and delivery during the reporting year.

45. Based on GLL’s performance, an overall council satisfaction rating of 3.15 has been achieved reducing slightly from 3.65 in the previous year. An analysis of council satisfaction can be found in Annex C.

This places GLL’s score into the category of Weak for this year’s performance.

46. For reasons of consistency with previous assessments, and for fairness between contractors, the following is a rough guide to the assessment of contractors on customer satisfaction:

Score	<3.0	3.0 – 3.399	3.4 – 3.899	3.9 – 4.299	4.3 – 5.0
Classification	Poor	Weak	Fair	Good	Excellent

47. Based on this performance, the head of service has made a judgement on council satisfaction as follows:

Council satisfaction judgement

Weak

Previous council satisfaction judgement for comparison

Fair

Overall assessment

48. It must be noted that the delivery of Dimension 1 and 2 have not been possible due to circumstances out of GLL’s control and for Officers to deliver. Whilst a consideration should be taken to scoring the overall Scrutiny year it must be noted that all mechanisms available to Officers could not be scored as a result of the pandemic.

49. Considering the performance of the contractor against KPT, customer satisfaction, council satisfaction and the other areas of note above the head of service has made an overall judgement as follows:

Council overall satisfaction judgement

Weak

Previous overall assessment for comparison

Good

Strengths and areas for improvement

50. The following highlights the strengths and areas for improvement relating to the performance of the contractor over the last year:

Strengths

· General Managers and Partnership Managers remain very approachable and willing to help in all situations

· Teams within the leisure centres are very amiable and generally very knowledgeable about their roles and the organisation

· GLL’s approach to Covid secure measures has been impeccable and widely recognised as far as the DCMS

· Teams continue to work well to deliver joint projects including major works especially on carbon reducing schemes and building projects

Areas for improvement

· GLL website in terms of accuracy and use of information which we suggest is down to the resource to update and review pages by individual managers

· GLL customer communications is slow and laborious. Residents suffering through lack in speed of responses and call handling.

· GLL facility teams identifying issues in centres rather than the client team providing work lists and the control in use of the CAFM system

· Use of the CAFM system in general needs to be a daily exercise utilising the system as a live system.

51. We have worked with GLL to develop an action plan to address areas for improvement. The action plan is attached as Annex B and will be delivered in 2020/2021.

Contractor’s feedback

52. A key feature of the process for reviewing the performance of contractors is that the council provides them with an opportunity to give their feedback on the assessment, including suggestions for improvements to council processes. This is included in Annex E attached to this report.

Financial implications

53. Faringdon Astro Turf Pitch (ATP) has continued to be delayed in its delivery which has impacted the revenue delivery of the GLL contract. Officers are seeking a S77 from the Secretary of State for Education.

54. This follows an application being made under notification to the Secretary of State for Education of a disposal of playing field land under Schedule 1, Part 3 of the Academies Act 2010. Applying for the consent of the Secretary of State to a disposal of playing field land under the Funding Agreement. This land is owned by the Faringdon Learning Trust.

55. The financial implications of its delay in delivery against the Invitation to Submit Final Tender are being discussed as part of the overall GLL support package taken to council in March 2021.

Legal implications

56. In April 2020, GLL asked the councils for a support package whilst leisure centres were closed and gradually reopened to the public. The basis of the request was that the Government, Sport England and Swim England’s Covid-19 health and safety requirements impacted the service andincome levels whilst national lockdowns, then social distancing rules, remained.

57. On 29 October 2020, GLL presented officers with a Transition Plan which focused on a package of operational and contractual changes to streamline services and reduce overheads and operating costs. The package of changes is necessary to give GLL a better opportunity to generate a profit and repay any financial support provided by the councils.

58. Since April 2020, with advice from Bevan Brittan LLP and Strategic Leisure Ltd, officers have worked with GLL to negotiate a complete support package.

59. The Covid-19 Leisure Support Package aligns with the Government’s Procurement Policy Notice, and reflects the terms of the Local Government Sales, Fees and Charges Compensation Scheme, National Leisure Recovery Fund, Clause 38 of the joint contract and is based on independent external legal advice from Bevan Brittan LLP and independent leisure sector advice from Strategic Leisure Ltd.

Conclusion

60. The contract dealt with more than 2.2 million visits prior to the pandemic each year at its peak. The variety and complexity of the services provided by GLL demonstrate the size and scale of the task to meet thousands of customer needs and expectations. The impact of Covid-19 has decimated this position and made the current reporting year a difficult one to quantify.

61. The future ‘new normal’ is yet to be determined by the pandemic. Slowly the leisure centres start to allow customers back into the buildings, but with heavily restricted measures and complex programming in place.

62. With the recent changes the pandemic leaves the contract in a difficult position when establishing measurable outcomes at this stage.

63. Considering the performance of the contractor unable to report on KPT’s and customer satisfaction. The only measurable dimension is council satisfaction, the head of service has made an overall judgement based on GLL achieving a ‘Weak’

64. The head of service has assessed GLLs overall performance as ‘Weak’ for its delivery of the leisure management contract for 2020/21. The committee is asked to make any comments to the Cabinet Members with responsibility for leisure to enable them to make a final assessment on performance by way of an individual Cabinet Member Decision, and to take into account the circumstances by way of how difficult the delivery of the contract was for this reporting Scrutiny year. With the sites closed for 9 months, and proactively reopened when allowed, the committee are asked to consider if this year should be formally marked as NOT SCORED, rather than leave a legacy assessment of ‘Weak’

65. If the committee does not agree with the head of service assessment, then this report will be referred to Cabinet and a final assessment of GLLs performance made.

Annex A – Customer satisfaction

There has been no report provided by GLL on the customer satisfaction. The service delivery changed to a Customer Experience Department (CED) led by GLL Head Office. All direct enquiries and complaints have been handled via this service and removed from the leisure centre operation.

Feedback received directly by the councils

Type of Complaint to Councils	Yearly Total 2020/21	Type of Compliment to Councils	Yearly Total 2020/21
General lack of communication on re-opening centres	15	Helpful staff	1
Overflowing bins, litter, overgrown shrubs during lockdown	2
Increase in prices / memberships	3
Lack of covid compliance by teams	2
Refund and membership issues not being resolved	4
Lack of response to emails/phone calls	2
Booking issues - website, app	5
State of outdoor courts	1
Various misc. issues	5
TOTALS	39	TOTALS	1

In 2020/21 the number of complaints made to the councils totalled 39 and the compliments received by the councils numbered 1. A comparison of this is 2019/20 reporting year there were 52 complaints and 3 compliments. In comparison 39 complaints with 4 months operation was considerably high in comparison to the previous reporting year.

Four years ago, GLL introduced a new customer feedback mechanism called Listen 360 which encourage customers to feedback on their whole experience. Unfortunately, this has been removed as a service. Whilst this is not contractual this service did assist with immediate feedback from customers. This service did encourage customers to actively feedback on their experiences which allows leisure centres teams to deal with issues in a proactive manor. The number of complaints to the councils has increased and could also be due to resident’s inability to voice their experience through the removal of this system.

Annex B – Action plan for 2021/2

Action	Owner	Due date
Refurbish changing rooms and sports hall floor at Abbey Sports Centre	Council	2021/22
Replace gas boiler system at Faringdon LC with ASHP’s and Solar PV	Council	2021/22
WHLTC upgrade of pool lighting to LED	GLL/Council	2021/22
WHLTC dry side disabled ramp and changing places facility to the Sports Hall	Council	2021/22
Replace gym flooring at Didcot Wave	Council	2021/22
Improved communication to residents via social media/website and direct contact through enquiries and phone calls	GLL	Immediate
Improve Identification of maintenance and issues in every centre	GLL	Immediate
Improve Access Control Security at White Horse LC	GLL/Council	2021/22
Upgrade Sports Hall lighting to LED Abbey SC and Henley LC	Council	2021/22
Refurbish Didcot Wave filters	Council	2021/22

Action Plan Outcomes for 2020/21

Action	Owner	Due date	Update
Refurbish changing rooms and sports hall floor at Abbey Sports Centre	GLL/Council	2020/21	S106 funding has been secured. Delayed due to Covid-19 and considered for 2021/22
Riverside Outdoor pool refurbishment of the pool surround and replacement bin store	GLL/Council	2020/20	Completed April 2020
Upgrade Thame dry side toilets	Council	2019/20	Works completed December 2020
WHLTC dry side disabled ramp and changing places facility to the Sports Hall	Council	2020/21	Delayed due to Covid-19 and considered for 2021/22
Faringdon Leisure Centre replacement Sauna and Steam rooms	GLL	2020/21	Completed December 2020
WHLTC lifecycle replacement Gym Equipment as part of contract	Council/GLL	2020/21	Wrapped up with contractual negotiations and to be rescheduled
Improve Identification of maintenance and issues in every centre	Council/GLL	Immediate	Still an ongoing issue on identifying maintenance tasks. Officers will continue to monitor through the client audits being completed.
Ensure staff in every gym as per the contract	GLL	Immediate	Improvements made and evident staff in the gym. Due to Covid secure cleanliness requirements it was evident staff were on hand to support.
Improve Access Security at White Horse LC	GLL	Immediate	Wrapped up with contractual negotiations and to be rescheduled

Annex C – Council Satisfaction for 2020/21

This assessment allows the council (as a client) to record its own satisfaction with aspects of a contractor’s performance which lie outside Key Performance Targets and customer satisfaction. Each officer with direct knowledge and who frequently interacts with the contractor should complete this form. Some questions can be left blank if the officer does not have direct knowledge of that question.

The numbers indicated in the following table are the average scores resulting from the total number of responses received for each question

Contractor

GLL

From (date)

1 April 2020

31 March 2021

Service delivery

	Attribute	(5) Very satisfied	(4) Satisfied	(3) Neither	(2) Dis-satisfied	(1) Very dissatisfied

1	Understanding of the client's needs			3.00

2	Response time				2.80

3	Delivers to time			3.00
			4
4	Delivers to budget			3.00

5	Efficiency of invoicing		4.50

6	Approach to health & safety			3.80

Communications and relations

	Attribute	(5) Very satisfied	(4) Satisfied	(3) Neither	(2) Dis-satisfied	(1) Very dissatisfied


7	Easy to deal with			3.60

8	Communication/Keeping Client Informed				2.60

9	Quality of written documentation			3.25

10	Compliance with council’s corporate identity				2.75

Improvement and innovation

	Attribute	(5) Very satisfied	(4) Satisfied	(3) Neither	(2) Dis-satisfied	(1) Very dissatisfied

11	Listening			3.00

12	Quality of relationship			3.20

13	Offers suggestions beyond the scope of work			3.00

14	Degree of innovation			3.00

15	Goes the extra mile			3.25

16 17 18	Supports the council’s sustainability objectives Supports the council’s equality objectives Degree of partnership working			3.75 3.00	2.67

The following table details all the scores obtained from officers to provide the council satisfaction based on the fully completed questionnaires

Rating	Votes	Score equivalent	Total
Very satisfied	1	X5	5
Satisfied	23	X4	92
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied	37	X3	111
Dissatisfied	14	X2	28
Very dissatisfied	0	X1	0

Total	75		236

The overall council satisfaction is calculated as follows: 236 ÷ 75 = 3.15 (refers to point 40 in the report)

Key documents

If required, has the contractor provided the council with annual updates of the following documents?


1.	Updated equalities information (Yes)

2.	Updated utility information (Yes)

3. Updated WAM information (Yes)

Annex D – Community Activities

Radio & Media Lockdown 1/Restart:

During lockdowns on a number of media and PR pieces occurred.

· BBC Radio Oxford-8 Week segment (with home fitness exercises),

· July-BBC South Today-TV Interview,

· Jack FM,

· BBC Radio Oxford (Breakfast, Afternoon, Evening slots)

· Daily Telegraph Article-Hosted Jim White Writer,

· Video for Department of Culture, Media & Sport on the covid secure measures,

· Tim Henman visit for Slazenger Academy (Filming Promotion),

cid:8CC19355-766D-460D-948A-50EC890541B0

cid:2FE27155-FDD0-4950-A8A7-75CA2A3381AB

Lockdown Two:

· BBC South Today (Reopening),

· BBC Radio Five Live Interview-Return of swimming,

· BBC Radio Oxford Interviews (Breakfast & Afternoon),

cid:7037EC13-0BF1-4A8F-90D7-852712D6CE4E cid:F49052BC-03D4-4CEB-A53A-3C9223C60ACF

Lock down Three:

· BBC Radio Oxford Lockdown Learning,

· BBC Radio Oxford Interviews x 2 Regarding Council Funding & Business Reopening

· Channel Four News - Outdoor Fitness Classes & Tennis,

· BBC South Today - Launch of outdoor Fitness Classes,

· BBC Radio Oxford - Launch of outdoor Fitness Classes,

Abingdon Food bank Donation-May 2020

· The centre donated £600 worth of food and stock to the Abingdon Foodbank,

· Stock donated included a wide selection of goods including Drinks and snacks.

Tennis Match Play Tournaments:

· For children aged between 6-8 years old,

· Introduction to competitive tennis,

· Gain points towards their LTA ranking (now called ITF World Ranking)

November 2020 Lockdown

National Lockdowns occurred across England Thursday 5th November until Wednesday 2nd December and our facilities had to shut. However, due to some of our centres being dual use and schools remaining open, staff came in at Didcot, Wantage, Faringdon, Wheatley Park, and Thame to ensure the schools could still use the centres throughout the month.

Teams looked after the buildings maintenance and cleaning to ensure all was ready for reopening and cleaned the sports halls and changing rooms every day for the schools after use to ensure they still had the same standard they would receive during normally opening times as well as the extra covid-secure cleaning required for them.

GSF Supported Athletes

In 2020/21 South Ox & Vale received 144 nominations for the GLL Sports Foundation, which helps to support local athletes by funding or free facility memberships.

Previous years figures are 137 in 2018, 115 in 2017 and 83 in 2016.

The results show how important the local interaction with promising athletes in the area has been and is a further indication of the impact of the GLL Sports Foundation.

Below are the split of numbers for 2020/21.

South Oxfordshire

	Awards
TOTAL	84

Vale of White Horse

	Awards
TOTAL	60

Annex E - Contractor 360° feedback

Contractor’s reaction / feedback on Council’s assessment

GLL believes that the Overall Score should not be applied for any period where ALL three Dimensions can not be scored for the year in full, in order to ensure a fair balanced result is achieved.

Dimension 1 – KPT’s

Not scored.

Dimension 2 – Customer Satisfaction

Not scored.

Dimension 3 – Council Satisfaction

GLL would like to highlight that they opened all required facilities at their financial risk, following the end of the first national lockdown, without a support package having been agreed, in order to support local communities and provide essential public services.

GLL notes that the officers surveyed were not all in post for the majority of this period due to a combination of Furlough and alternative duties as a result of the 8.5 months of facility closures. GLL would also like to note that the number of officers being surveyed reduced from eight to five following the removal of the participation officer team (who historically worked very closely with GLL) which will have a material impact on the officer scoring in comparison to previous years.

GLL were surprised to note that officers found it very difficult to communicate with front line staff during the restrictions. GLL worked hard to ensure that its management teams were customer facing to support enforcement of Covid Secure arrangements and Customer Experience improvements during the periods of restrictions.

GLL Managers remained working in periods of lockdown to support in the operation of joint use facilities when these were requested to remain open for education purposes which further supported in communication with officers. GLL also deployed staff to Didcot Wave Pool to facilitate Council Improvement works to the fitness suite and leisure pool flume.

Whilst GLL appreciates officer’s frustrations with the website, we feel we should highlight that the arrangements around government restrictions were constantly changing (sometimes with 24 hours notice) and that this had a material impact on accuracy of the website. Public announcements were often made by government with customers heading to the website for information prior to GLL receiving the governing body guidance.

Due to receptions being removed and staff moving outside into Concierge roles and with back of house roles largely moved to customer facing or furloughed to keep costs to a minimum. A decision was taken to move to a Centralised Customer Experience Team in an effort to handle the exceptionally high number of telephone calls and emails being received as a result of the enforced closures and varied restrictions imposed.

Whilst we note that there were complaints to council in relation to communication to customers during the first re-opening period, we would like to stress this was a very small number in comparison to the number of facility users and the volume of calls received, which was significant due to the complexities of the restrictions.

GLL would like to highlight that during the lockdown periods they had advised Council that the licence for the CAFM system would be suspended to reduce costs however on returning the system to use all service records were subsequently uploaded and reactive maintenance logging recommenced from that period onwards.

GLL notes the Officer comments in relation to the marginal drop in score for the facility inspections and would ask that it is recognised that these facilities had been put into an enforced and prolonged period of hibernation and then re-opened at short notice during a period of national restrictions. GLL also during this period had to completely rearrange every centres customer journey, gym equipment layouts and mark out every swimming pool, sports hall, studio, and other activity areas to ensure social distancing and re-train all front-line staff in a new way of working. GLL sees maintaining scores above 90% during this period as an achievement.

Feedback provided by

Luke Askew & Kevin Williams

Date

25.08.22

Annex F – Client Monitoring Scores

	Contract Year 4
	2020/21
CENTRES	Client Monitoring	* Client Monitoring	Variance
	Sep -20	Oct - 20
Abbey SC	85.4%	86.6%	+1.2%

Didcot LC	-	-	-

Wave	-	92.4%	-

Henley LC	-	86.4%	-

Park SC	91.0%	92.4%	+1.4%

Thame LC	-	93.7%	-

Faringdon LC	92.0%	91.6%	-0.4%

Wantage LC	88.2%	90.1%	+1.9%

WHLTC	-	91.5%	-

Abbey Meadows	-	-	-

Riverside	-	-	-

*Scoring marked on those completed. Therefore, average scores during operations taken