Leisure centres could transfer to charitable trust

by Lisa Reeves

Wednesday 17^th October 2012

Wed 17^th Oct 2012

Cheshire East Council are reviewing how the borough's leisure centres are operated in an attempt to cut costs.

The Cabinet agreed on Monday, 15th October, to appoint leisure and financial consultants at a cost of £30,000 to review a range of potential delivery models available and recommend a preferred option.

Options being considered include transfering the leisure facilities to a charitable trust which has been the preferred option for many Local Authorities. This is considered likely to provide the greatest potential savings because they would be exempt from paying VAT and business rates.

The Council operates fifteen leisure centres, eight of which are shared with high schools, employing over 400 full-time equivalent staff.

The total cost of operating these facilities in 2011/12 was £7.89m whilst the income generated was £5.85m - therefore taxpayers are subsiding the service by over £2m a year. This is equivalent to 75p per visit as the borough's leisure centres were visited just over 2.7 million times in 2011/12.

The report prepared for Monday's Cabinet meeting said "There is a need to achieve best value for the services we provide and reduce net operating costs wherever possible. The review of leisure services and the early establishment of the most appropriate operating model will help to achieve this.

"The selected consultant will look in detail at the options currently available to the Council and will set out the advantages and disadvantages of each model. The final report will include the likely cost and benefits of establishing a new model and an implementation plan for the preferred option."

In addition to transferring the leisure centres to a charitable trust the consultants will consider other options for operating the leisure facilities, including: a community interest company, social enterprise, a joint venture, a public sector subsidiary company and a limited liability partnership.

The consultants are expected to report back to Cabinet in December.

Tags:: Cheshire East Council

Comments

Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.

Stuart Redgard

Thursday 18^th October 2012 at 10:09 am

This reminds me of the Jimmy Carr "Tax Avoidance" story of earlier in the summer and the comments of the Prime Minister Mr David Cameron about tax avoidance schemes.

http://itv.co/WD84Fg

Is this proposal to change the status of leisure centre to Charitable trusts a tax avoidance scheme or a legitimate business idea?

Pete Taylor

Thursday 18^th October 2012 at 8:13 pm

Surely the owners of these leisure centres are the council-tax payers, rather than "the council", is it not we who should decide what changes, if any, are to be made?

Another £30k spent on consultants, where have I heard that before?

Monday 22^nd October 2012 at 11:27 am

At the time of the demise of Macclesfield Borough Council they had gone through the whole process of putting all the Leisure Centres in MBC into a Charitable Trust. Along came CEC and the proposals that were close to implementation at that time were dropped, and thus all the Consultants fees paid out were wasted. Now we read that CEC are going to spend another £30,000 going over the same exercise again.
Leaving to oneside the threat by CEC to demolish Wilmslow Leisure Centre I do believe that CEC owes an explanation as to why the previous Consultants work cannot be used .
Does any Councillor from CEC read this excellent communication medium and will any CEC Councillor answer this enquiry?