Learning from three highly successful procurements

Toby Kingsbury reflects on SLC’s recent experience of supporting Councils through their sport, physical activity and leisure procurements. In this blog he explores how operators are responding positively to new contract opportunities, despite the challenging market conditions. We’re all aware of the unprecedented challenges faced by our sector over the…

Looking back on 2022

That was the year that was… 2022 is a year many in local government and the sport, physical activity and active wellbeing and cultural sectors will want to forget. However, despite sluggish recovery in many areas, labour market shortages, rising supply chain and construction costs, inflation and to top it…

Last orders on Leisure? What Lies Ahead?

Battered through the Covid pandemic. Sluggish recovery. Increased supply chain costs. Recruitment and retention issues. UK and global economic instability leading to the cost-of-living crisis. Utility costs decimating any gains made through efficiency, programming, and service innovation. The public sector leisure sector is going through an existential crisis, according to…

Procurement in an Uncertain World

Duncan Wood-Allum, Managing Director of SLC reflects on SLC’s recent experience of supporting Councils through their sport, physical activity and leisure procurements. In this blog he explores timing and planning procurements, risk transfer, changing realities and perceptions and offers some hope for the future. Timing is everything Unforeseen delays are…

Anywhere But Here

There’s a scene from Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hanks, having fought his way up a section of Omaha beach in a hail of bullets, comes across a young private sheltering behind an obstacle. The private asks him ‘what the hell do we do now, Sir?’.  Another soldier shouts ‘What’s…

A New Future

As the sector looks into the void of the COVID-19 lockdown and its aftermath, SLC’s Managing Director Duncan Wood-Allum presents a Blueprint for a positive future for local authority leisure, sport and physical activity. This has been developed to provide an adaptable vision and roadmap for shaping future services – one that does not leave the most deprived and excluded in our society behind.