It was announced earlier this month that GLL, a large company that runs leisure facilities in many places in London, and round the country, including South Oxfordshire, has won the ten year contract to run leisure facilities on behalf of the Vale of White Horse District Council and South Oxfordshire from September 1st 2014.
GLL began life as Greenwich Leisure Limited in 1992, and merged with Nexus Community Leisure in 2011, and will now run over 120 facilities. So they are big.
That means that the 2 facilities in Abingdon: The Vale of White Horse Leisure Centre, currently run by Active Nation,
and the Outdoor Pool, currently run by SOLL, will come under the control of GLL.
(Management of Tilsley Park, Abingdon’s other facility, was previously taken over by Abingdon School.)
District Councils are increasingly in the business of managing contracts with specialist companies on behalf of council tax payers, rather than running services themselves. The new contract could be good news to Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council who currently subsidise the open air pool to the tune of over £40K a year.
Anyway, good to see that the outdoor pool was a good temperature yesterday.
While I understand that contracting services out is intended to save money, experience of central government’s success (in information technology procurement and in other infrastructure provision) is not encouraging. Moreover, it removes accountability from a direct relationship between voters and those elected to a situation where those responsible for the the services do not answer to those who use the services. If GLL don’t provide the standards at the agreed costs, they do not have to answer to the electorate; they can simply walk away (or be fired), Meanwhile councillors and officials are less able to respond to direct complaints because they no longer run the show.
I know the arguments for contracting out; I have had them rehearsed to me for forty years and more, but the social inter-connectedness of our communities is being lost as those who judge success solely in financial and fiscal terms lose sight of other considerations.
Local councillors stated last year that additional car parking at the leisure centre would be provided this year in order to stop customers blocking the access roads to the residential estate opposite. I wonder what happens to those plans and the money earmarked for the work … back to square one I imagine.
I went to the open air pool once last year. It was very poorly managed,and I welcome the opportunity for someone else to take over. My experience was that I decided to use the open air pool for half an hour’s lane swimming. I arrived for the was supposed “lane swimming” timetabled for an hour, but lots of teenages (post GCSE presumably, since it was term time) were using the main pool area to jump in and generally lark about. I spoke with the lifeguard about this who effectively shrugged his shoulders and did nothing. (I wonder if he would have been any good if someone’s life was in danger). I never returned.
I had a similar experience at the outdoor pool to that of Abingdon resident – lots of teenagers in the deep end jumping in on top of other swimmers.
Lifeguards wouldn’t do anything about it and the kids wouldn’t move when asked.
I know it’s good that young people are outside and getting exercise but could the pool staff not rope off a lane for people who don’t want to be leapt upon?
I had a lovely swim in the outdoor pool in my lunch break yesterday. I was the only swimmer, and the first of the day. I consider it extremely good value that for four pounds I had the use of an entire heated pool to myself, and a lifeguard watching just me. Thank you! I wish the pool was open for longer in the year – I could quite happily go on using it through September.