Developing Effective & Sustainable Community Use Sports Provision

Colin Grogan, Sport, Health and Inclusion Development Manager, Suffolk County Council

Duncan Wood-Allum, Director SLC

1 December 2011

What we’re going to cover today

• Introductions

• Background to Suffolk CC Community Use Pilot

• Key findings, outcomes and learning

• Key challenges and opportunities

• The Community Use Support Framework

• Key considerations

• Q+A.

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Background

• Suffolk County Council’s aspirations for health and wellbeing - ‘More and better services to communities for less’:

1. Broadening community access to sports facilities on school sites

2. Improving the quality and consistency of service from community use facilities

3. Making the management of community use more efficient for schools, operators and funding partners

4. Asset rationalisation of facilities where there is duplication of provision in a location or over supply of facilities exists

5. Improving the sustainability of community use in individual schools.

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Background

• 4 Stage Pilot

• 12 Schools in across Suffolk schools in South West Ipswich and South Suffolk – also known as the SWISS pilot area.

Project objectives

• To identify the current state of community use of school services within the pilot area

• To assess the scale and potential of improvements to community use of school services in the pilot area to develop

• To identify efficient frameworks and a programme of improvements to make this happen within the pilot area.

 

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Key Stage 1 Findings

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Lettings Based Schools

• Inefficient bookings, administration and cash collection processes

• Constraints on the limits of community use due to condition, design and location of facilities

• Lack of understanding of catchment and target markets

• Pricing that is not optimised for commercial or community users.

Key Stage 1 Findings

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Community Use Operations

• Limited objective setting and performance management

• Poor financial performance

• Isolation of operational staff – lack of development opportunities

• Lack of clear strategy and objectives

• Inefficient bookings and administration processes

• Pricing that is not optimised for commercial or community users

• Lack of understanding of catchment and target markets

• Limited or no marketing activity

• Limited or poor operational systems and procedures.

Stage 1 Outcomes

• Encouraging dialogue

• Awareness raised of financial performance

• Understanding the wider contribution of community use makes

• Staff engaged

• Raising the awareness of Community use to Councils and wider partners.

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Stage 1 Lessons learned

•The need for flexibility

•School senior management time spent on community use

•Approach with schools

•One to one support.

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Key Stage 2 Findings

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• Benchmarking reinforced Project Team’s view

• Market Research highlighted a number of opportunities to develop programmes and revenue

• Consultation with NGB’s highlighted a number of initiatives and opportunities for schools

• Lettings based schools very keen to explore shared booking facilities

• Schools enthusiastic about the CUSF, but wary about any additional costs.

Stage 2 Outcomes

• Each school owning an improvement plan which they can prioritise themselves

• Awareness amongst stakeholders

• Positive support from local authorities such as Babergh DC in supporting and funding the CUSF

• Increased morale and confidence amongst community use staff

• Improved focus of the role Suffolk County Council can play moving forwards in enabling sustainability within community use

• Potential creation of a market for social enterprises

• Schools started to open up to the process and lose their initial distrust and scepticism.

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Stage 2 Lessons learned

•The need for flexibility and treating each school individually

•Schools often need time to reflect following a review

•Some schools began to advocate the process to those still uncertain of the perceived benefits

•The consistency of approach and personnel by the Project team was crucial to build trust.

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Key Challenges and Opportunities

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Challenges OpportunitiesWith 12 Pilot Schools , 12 different ambitions, attitudes and perceptions

To capture the vision for the school and enhance this through the Community Use offer

Conflicting priorities within each school’s SMT in relation to resourcing and strategic issues – eg conversion to Academies

Provide support to enable schools to address longstanding issues in a SMART way

Many staff operating the sites were in isolation and their perception of quality and good performance often differed from industry norms

To support staff in building their capabilities and skills to enable them to improve the site’s performance

Avoiding appearing to be critical of the current approach being taken

Focus on potential improvements and financial performance – building on current operation

The Community Use Support Framework

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Lettings

Lettings

Comm

unity Use Schools

Comm

unity Use Schools

The Community Use Support Framework – Support Network for Schools

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•Local Authorities

•Suffolk Sports Partnership

•Suffolk County Council - Culture, Sport and Communities

•National Governing Bodies of Sport

•Sports Development and Funding Agencies – Sport England.

How the CUSF operates

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Community Use

Subsidy from School 1

Community Use

Subsidy from School 1

Community Use

Subsidy from School 2

Community Use

Subsidy from School 2

CUSF BudgetCUSF

Budget

Draw down

Support for 12

Schools

Draw down

Support for 12

Schools

CUSF operator

CUSF operator

Schools move to a sustainable operating position within 18 monthsSchools move to a sustainable operating position within 18 months

Key Considerations

• Time - the process can take a long time to get right – its all about establishing trust with schools

• Resources – it will take some time for you to see a return on the investment in establishing the Framework, but improvements will deliver better financial performance

• Establishing real costs of operating community use can require a great deal of persistence!

• Understand that many staff involved are not specialists; you need to understand things through the eyes of an educationalist, initially not as a ‘leisure professional’

• Understand that schools are legally unable to subsidise the community use operation, so business planning and forecasting has to be realistic

• There is a lot of support out there for schools wishing to optimise their community use operation.

• Finally, the engagement and leadership of the Headteacher is fundamental to success!

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Contacts / Further Information

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Duncan Wood-AllumThe Sport, Leisure and Culture Consultancy01444 487740duncan.wood-allum@sportleisureculture.co.uk

Colin GroganSuffolk County Council01473 264331colin.grogan@suffolk.gov.uk