Is this the end of public leisure services as we know it? Yes – but active wellbeing is our collective future

Duncan Wood-Allum, Managing Director of SLC, recently produced an article for Health Club Management outlining the reasons why he believes the investment in place-based working hasn’t realised its full potential. He calls for using the upcoming local government reorganisation as the catalyst to enable communities to move more and live well. He describes how the public leisure sector can evolve and pivot into a sustainable active wellbeing service which delivers measurable improvements. The full article is below, with an abridged version published in Health Club Management issue 6 2025 which can be accessed here on page 60.

Since 2020, the public leisure, sport and physical activity sector has confronted three major challenges: COVID, rising utility costs and recent national insurance rises. These issues have tested the resilience of local authorities and their operating partners. Workforce retention and recruitment remains an ongoing challenge and increased construction costs have reduced potential returns on investment for renewing facilities.

However, strong throughput and financial performance, particularly in the last two years, has enabled most partnerships to ride the storm.

Those partnerships benefitting from greater economies of scale have tended to fair even better. Partnerships prepared to take the risk of implementing the Agency Model (enabling VAT savings) are delivering additional financial benefits – for now.

Frustratingly (and unsurprisingly), the most recent Active Lives research published by Sport England again showed (when taking into account population growth) that the nation’s physical activity dial has not moved to any degree and stubborn inequalities remain.

The £250 million Sport England investment into Place Expansion over 5 years as part of its Uniting the Movement Strategy continues to gather momentum, primarily in the c.100 places targeted.

However, this funding is dwarfed in comparison to wider national investment. Every year across the UK, c.£1 billion of combined resources and investment goes into public sector leisure and active wellbeing, open spaces, playing pitches and community provision.

These combined locally controlled facilities, spaces and services are about to undergo significant change. Devolution and local government reorganisation (LGR) will happen under this parliament in two phases.

Key drivers and ambitions include devolved power to the regions, better use of resources, removing layers of and duplication of bureaucracy, improved strategic investment decisions and greater alignment of health and social care.

Experience has shown us that whilst politicians want to see the end vision, the scale and complexity of such change is often always oversimplified, underestimated and underfunded.

In practical terms, this will mean multiple local authorities combining into one larger entity. No more district and borough councils.

So, is LGR an existential threat to public sector leisure, sport and physical activity or a once in a generation opportunity?

It’s both.

Could this be the end of traditional leisure services?

Quite possibly. Over time there is a risk that older and less effective portfolios could become marginalised / asset transferred creating greater fragmentation. We’ve seen examples of inherited leisure portfolios being passed around directorates in new unitary authorities in a bizarre game of ‘pass the overly complex parcel’.

With the risk of a vacuum of leadership in these new organisations, the future could be quite grim. Let’s not dwell on this. None of us is interested in seeing an erosion of services and physical activity participation levels – particularly amongst those who are less active or inactive.

LGR – A once in a generation opportunity?

There are three compelling transformational opportunities for public leisure services transforming into an active wellbeing service through the catalyst of LGR. These can be framed at a local political and executive level – where the real influence sits.

Firstly, to create an active wellbeing service. Secondly, to fund it from existing resources and assets. Thirdly, to increase participation levels, particularly amongst less active and inactive populations.

 

Creation of an active wellbeing service

With the renewed focus on addressing health inequalities and social care, a traditional leisure service is unlikely to be seen as a core service. Reimagining leisure services and adapting / pivoting them to become an active wellbeing service is gaining real traction across the country. In our work at SLC, at the vanguard of this pivot, we are finding it gets real support from elected members and system partners in health and adult social care as well as the voluntary sector.

Whilst there is no one size fits all, an active wellbeing service is likely to have some or all of the following key elements:

  • A specialist client commissioning function with the ability to lead, convene system partners and oversee their partnership with their active wellbeing service provider.
  • An insight and evaluation function to support co-design of services and refine the offer as the needs of communities evolve over time.
  • Some commercial leisure functions within facilities to drive revenue and support the wider service.
  • Workforce transformation to upskill the leisure workforce enabling leadership to reposition their role within the wider system and for front line staff to better support users with more complex needs.
  • An integrated adult social care package to support independent living and improved outcomes for adults in care and older adults.
  • Allied health professionals delivering services alongside the existing workforce.
  • Planning expertise to support influencing planning policy and supporting active design and placemaking around active communities.
  • An outreach function and enabling function to support the education sector, voluntary sector, sports clubs and local partners to optimise resources and collaboration locally.
  • Programming and communications functions supporting active local spaces and places by coordinating activities and sharing resources.

All of the above could be revenue funded sustainably through the combined economies of scale of an integrated active wellbeing service. This would however be subject to adopting a strategic approach to facility provision, capital investment and a sustainable service delivery model.

In summary, the active wellbeing service would be outward facing, enabling place-based working, feature core delivery of commercial and inclusive facility-based provision, outreach and community engagement. It would be embedded, serving as a key delivery partner across multiple functions of the new local authority.

Sustainability

Looking ahead, leisure and active wellbeing services cannot require significant subsidy. They are likely to exist only if they are revenue neutral or make a positive contribution / surplus. Waiting for health to start contributing major funding through a prevention lens is logical but in the current climate, sadly, is a pipe dream.

Economies of scale will be the key enabler for transformation of leisure services into a sustainable active wellbeing service. This is likely to necessitate some decommissioning and service redesign – often long overdue in the legacy councils who lacked the political will to make the tough decisions.

By ensuring the portfolio of leisure and active wellbeing facilities is sustainable – and aligned with net zero goals and strategic investment – larger partnerships can generate revenue surpluses. This can be reinvested into the key active wellbeing elements highlighted above.

What potential savings could be made through combining the sustainable elements of leisure portfolios together?

On average, SLC is seeing individual local authorities achieve c£800k in annual cash savings through new external partnering arrangements.

These savings are typically realised when compared to previous models—whether in-house, trust-operated, or previously externalised.

This is often locked into a 10-year contract, providing some long-term certainty (barring a pandemic).

These partnerships have balanced financial and social objectives and, in most cases, have ringfenced funding for community outreach and place-based working.

Imagine scaling this into a much larger partnership with multiple facilities and services from the constituent councils which have formed the new unitary. The annual net revenue generated could be c£3-5 million per annum and enable the service to be self-sustaining. Key here is the local authority reinvesting the surplus back into the active wellbeing service. This is a political decision.

The social value generated from such an ‘at scale’ operation would be compelling, building on the ambitions of new unitaries who are already on this journey, such as North Yorkshire Council.

However, the potential self-funding nature of an active wellbeing service makes a compelling argument for a seat at the shadow unitary authority table.

Active wellbeing services will need to generate the value themselves combining an unapologetically commercial focus aligned with a place based and systems mindset.

There is still a need to support operators in better understanding the potential of combining these roles together and working even more collaboratively. Encouragingly, we are already seeing some of these behaviours through the partnerships we have supported in places including Sheffield and Northumberland.

We’ll still need continued capital investment in infrastructure that typically will be supporting a wide range of leisure, community and wellbeing services, but this is the only sustainable way forward as I see it. If we’re serious about increasing participation of the less active and inactive, this can be enabled by a wider universal offer. One that recycles the investment of those who invest in their wellbeing to support those currently unable to enjoy that benefit.

 

Closing the participation inequality gap

The collective potential of public sector leisure, active wellbeing, open spaces, playing pitches, and community provision has not been fully realised. Anecdotally, this has been particularly noticeable where an externalised partnership is in place.

Is it any surprise why there has been no real improvement in physical activity participation levels alongside an increase in health inequalities?

I’m struggling to understand the reasons for this, as there are some isolated examples where operators of facilities and services are engaged in place-based partnerships. This certainly warrants further investigation and exploration. Addressing it is within our gift through designing this collaborative approach into governance, learning and workforce development, service models and organisational cultures, partnerships and specifications.

This local potential could focus on drawing on best practice to:

  • Use the expertise of operator partners to target future capital investment, optimising revenue-generating sport, leisure and wellbeing activities. At the same time, ensuring the facility-based offer remains as inclusive as possible.
  • Influence positive planning developments that support active wellbeing through play, active design and flexible outdoor pitch provision. This should be linked to the upcoming housing growth across the country.
  • Target investment into supporting elements of the local system that can contribute to increasing participation within their communities with a greater emphasis on less active and inactive communities.
  • Invest in improved monitoring and evaluation of services and activities to generate better local intelligence and insight, using measures such as the WELLBY to capture broader social value using trusted and respected methodologies.
  • Focus on working with what local physical assets and networks exist locally and on how they can be optimised to encourage, support and enable more physical activity.
  • Reestablish sports development to deepen links with schools and sports clubs. Focus on creating opportunities for young people to address the drastic reductions in activity – particularly with girls of secondary age.
  • Enable support for grassroots sports clubs and voluntary groups, creating committed local partnerships.
  • Build resilience in anticipation of centralised funding being cut at some point in the future.
  • Support cultural change in these new institutions to embed physical activity into everyday working. Active travel, workforce wellbeing, leaders in trainers ‘walking from the front’ Andy Burnham style.

What would an optimal solution look like?

In some parts of the country this work has already started. We’d encourage local authorities and shortly, shadow unitary authorities to start preparing for this opportunity now.

Key steps would include:

  1. Creating an intelligent client and commissioning function for active wellbeing within the shadow authority to make the case politically and provide support for other core functions.
  2. Begin to co-produce and develop a positive vision of active wellbeing as a key visible impact and benefit of local government reorganisation linked to wider internal and external stakeholder engagement.
  3. Influence and secure a seat of influence in the shadow unitary authority and seek to shape thinking in public health, adult social care and children’s services, planning, regeneration and economic development.
  4. Develop a knowledge bank of data and insight to protect the loss of organisational memory in the event staff change or move on.
  5. Audit what services you have and will inherit and if they are best placed to sit within or outside the new unitary’s portfolio.
  6. Understanding the condition of the facilities and local active spaces each respective local authority is responsible for over the next 15 years. Without this information, it will be impossible to make positive decisions.
  7. Mapping local assets, places, networks and organisations, developing up to date databases of potential collaborative partners.

Hold onto your hats because this is not going to be a smooth transition.

The future is bright for those prepared to step forward, embrace and shape the opportunity LGR presents. It is time to harness the collective potential of our existing assets, services and partnerships.

Let’s win the argument for sustainable wellbeing, get on and deliver it.

Is this the end of public leisure services as we know it? Yes – but active wellbeing is our collective future.

 

Duncan Wood-Allum, Managing Director 

If anything in this article has piqued your interest, feel free to contact us via email (info@slc.uk.com) or call 01444 459927.