Agenda item

Joint Scrutiny Committee is asked to consider Greenwich Leisure Limited’s (GLL) performance in delivering the joint leisure management contract for the periods 2019-2020, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 and provide any comments to Cabinet members.

Councillor Maggie Filipova-Rivers, Cabinet Member for Community Wellbeing (South) introduced the report, supported by Councillor Emily Smith, Vale Council Leader, who was standing in for Councillor Pighills, Cabinet Member for Healthy Communities (Vale), who was unable to attend. Chair reminded that Covid support packages were already scrutinised, and further questions would need to be sent to officers or dealt with in confidential session if necessary.

Cabinet member explained that officers had worked hard to produce these reports together to give an overview of 2019 through to 2022, capturing the difficulties caused by Covid and lockdowns, and in 2022 the impact was still being felt in the leisure sector, particularly for finances. Cabinet Member felt that we were lucky to still maintain these services despite the impacts of the pandemic. GLL as an operator had been impacted, not just the councils, and this was reflected fairly in reports.

Committee were asked: had we scored GLL fairly? Considering that some measures had no score due to the impacts of the pandemic, was it fair to give an overall score?

Present to the support the item were three representatives from GLL, and officers Mark Foster and Ben Whaymand.

Committee were welcomed to comment:

• Not related to the performance report, a member asked about options for rural / isolated communities who want to access leisure facilities. Shuttle buses, volunteer driver options? It was suggested that the committee member could email Cabinet Member and County Council. It would be a Council topic to discuss, not GLL or related to the performance periods in the reports.
• Page 85 – Compliance with corporate identity – this was queried. Officer responded that this was in relation to marketing and PR and how GLL links to councils websites and materials.
• Page 48: KPT4 – rated as poor – increase in concessionary memberships post Covid. Had work started on increasing concessionary membership? It was responded yes, and this should be reflected in future reporting.
• Page 98: reduction in electricity and gas consumption. Was there scope to update the figures. Cabinet Member added that there was partnership working between councils and GLL to meet carbon targets and work with the KPTs set when the contract was drawn up. Officer added that kilowatt hours (Kwh) figures would be used in future in relation to consumption. Committee member asked for breakdown of cost and carbon impact of gas and electricity units, as where gas was decreased in use, electricity could increase.
• Why was there no engagement from Active Communities Team? Officer responded that this was mainly because of furloughed staff at GLL and social distancing.
• Why was booking classes difficult? It was responded that quarterly meetings were now in place to help make improvements. GLL stated that they were frustrated with the IT project at the time, but they were happy with the progress being made now.
• GLL on being asked, stated that they were happy with the partnership, which  was delivering good community outcomes, but they queried whether an overall score should be given when there were categories not given a score at all, therefore negatively impacting an overall score. Members discussed this, and views were expressed that you cannot give an accurate overall rating for 2020-21 / 2021-22, and that the period required narrative to understand rather than a measure.

Resolved:

Scrutiny Committee reviewed the performance and agreed that for the period of 2020-21 and 2021-22 (affected by Covid restrictions), where there were performance dimensions with no rating, it would be unfair to give an overall rating. Therefore, there should be no overall rating. This was suggested for officers to make amendments to the reports with Cabinet Member approval.