At SLC we’ve taken all the necessary steps to ensure our staff and clients are safe and that we take care of our associates, suppliers and partners. We are delighted they are reciprocating.
We are focussed on continuing to deliver projects for our clients and where we can, offer wider support (or just a friendly ear) to the sector.
There will be significant short-term chaos that we will all just have to try to live through.
SLC is in this for the long haul and we are determined to be part of the rebuilding of our communities once this storm passes.
This crisis is creating the space and time for us to invest in reflection, listening, learning and exploring new ideas to support the sector as we all eventually step back into the light.
We are listening to key stakeholders in the sector and facilitating peer to peer support and discussions, to enable us all to hold onto hope and start to think about how we can collectively shape the new, post COVID-19 world.
The impact this will have on the current infrastructure of leisure in the public, private and third sectors will be seismic. Our hearts go out to all of those who are affected by this.
Old empires will fall and new players will emerge to support a market that wants to invest in their health and wellbeing. There will still be a market to meet the needs of local authorities who want to commission services to support active communities. But it will look very different.
However, this crisis offers an opportunity for transformation of old facilities, inefficient and ineffective service models and its associated poorly targeted public funding. The work we have been doing in the development of national guidance to support strategic thinking, planning of leisure services and the management of those services is timely. Once the crisis is over, it can support the development and realisation of a new vision for the future of public leisure services.
We have been and will always be in the business of transforming leisure to address inequalities and support healthier communities. Once the nation is through this, our collective skills and experience as a sector will be needed by those who want to build a better, more inclusive society – hopefully one where health and wellbeing is valued above all else.
Hold fast and good luck everyone.
Duncan Wood-Allum
Managing Director