All needs assessments/strategies, as standard, provide detailed scenarios setting out the level of future demand generated from population increases derived from housing growth. In the case of indoor and built facilities strategies (IBF) and playing pitch strategies (PPS) they also, as appropriate and applicable, detail the associated costs of supplying increased sports provision using Sport England’s calculators.

In our expereince, developments of 600+ dwellings tend to generate demand for the creation of new outdoor sports provision.  The presumption is that larger housing expansion schemes will generate demand for sports such as football. Consideration is normally given to the potential for provision of multi-pitch sites with suitable ancillary provision i.e., clubhouse/changing facilities and car parking. Providing single, even double, grass pitch sites is no longer considered to offer long-term sustainability for pitch sports.

An early KKP foray into major new settlement planning was the Elms Park development in Northwest Cheltenham on the boundary of Cheltenham and Tewkesbury authorities. This incorporated plans for 4,000+ homes and the best practice and design considerations provided followed our production of the joint authority Social, Sport & Open Spaces Study (including PPS).

Primarily though, our needs assessments/strategies are key to informing the need for sports provision to be secured as part of strategic housing developments. Initial proposals on the 5,500 dwelling Hanwood Park development in Kettering – particularly in relation to provision of artificial pitches for hockey, were challenged, updated and improved following our production of the 2020 Kettering PPS, IBF and Open Space Study.  The overall process was testament to the fact that constructive and open dialogue with NGBs is critical to successful development of new provision. Crucially, it is not just about providing the facilities, but assessing who is going to use them, at what level and based upon what degree of predicted community and sport value and sustainability.

Master planning for the 4,000+ home New Lubbesthorpe development in the Blaby District Council area was also informed by the Authority’s PPS. In addition to the inclusion of a range of woodland walks, cycle paths and green open space, the recommendations set out in its FA/Football Foundation generated local football facilities plan were also pivotal to the Authority securing funding for new leisure facilities and all-weather sports pitches plus full-sized 3G pitches linked to a new secondary school development.

The 2021 South Worcestershire IBF and PPS informed cross-boundary community swimming pool, sports hall, fitness and pitch provision requirements linked to housing development at a range of strategic development sites the largest of which, at 5,000 homes, was at Worcestershire Parkway.

In Carlisle, we have been assessing the provision required to service demand generated by the new resident base in the St Cuthberts Garden Village which will have a planned 10,000 homes. Plans for recreation and leisure provision are being informed by the City’s Playing Pitch & Outdoor Sports Strategy 2022. It is likely to include at least one sports hub plus community use provision at the new secondary school. Of all the sites included in the Government’s Garden Village programme, St Cuthbert’s is one of the largest in terms of potential capacity and is among the most ambitious development projects being actively progressed in the north of England.

Bringing things right up to the present, the Colchester & Tendring Borders Garden Community (8,000 homes) is being informed via the joint-authority commissioned Colchester & Tendring Open Space, Sport & Recreation suite of studies (including IBF, PPS and open spaces strategy) 2023 and the Lancaster South, Bailrigg Garden Village will be informed via the Open Space Study and new PPS which will be completed by mid-2023.

The Government believes that the development of locally-led garden towns and villages has the potential to deliver the homes that communities need and that, in addition to providing new homes, they also bring new jobs and boost local economies. Whether one agrees with this form of development as a way forward, the quality and scale of open space, sport and leisure provision is pivotal to the subsequent quality of life in these new, and the adjacent existing, communities. Key to this is having a full understanding and evidence base – and ensuring that it is fully addressed.

Claire Fallon is principal consultant and director at KKP

Picture courtesy of the Leicester Mercury

February 2023

The FA Inspiring Positive Change Strategy and its Let Girls Play campaign support its strategic ambition to give all girls what it describes as ‘equal access to play football’ in school. At present, according to the FA, 63% per cent of schools currently offer girl’s football in PE lessons and its target is to raise this figure to 75% of schools providing this by 2024.

The #LetGirlsPlay campaign supports this ambition by encouraging people to stop, listen and see how they can make a difference to this current challenge. Its website provides resources to help influence the start of change and allow more girls to feel the mental and physical benefits of exercise through playing football.

The Lionesses’ have called for a nationwide shake-up to the way sports are taught, telling the Government that “this is an opportunity to make a difference” and asking it to make it a priority to invest in girls’ football in schools, so that ‘every girl has a choice’.

Baroness Sue Campbell noted that ‘currently, only a third of girls aged 5-18 participate in football every week and suggested that ‘now is the time to drive a far-reaching ambition to open up the game in every way to girls’ indicating that the Let Girls Play campaign ‘allows parents and teachers to play a huge role in joining us in this commitment’.

While this is an understandable ambition for football it does raise a few issues.

The phrase ‘equal access’ is somewhat loaded and, arguably, inappropriately emotive. Does the equality reference relate to boys or is football being equated with other notionally girls’ sports. If it does relate to boys is the implicit assumption (or proven situation) that all boys have ‘access to football’?

If it is to gain this greater foothold on the PE curriculum, what must give way – netball, hockey, badminton, athletics, gymnastics, dance? Would provision of equal access to football be damaging to these other sports/activities or is this an FA desire to create an Orwellian scenario where all sports are equal but some are more equal than others!

The influential Women’s Sports & Fitness Foundation Changing the Game for Girls report notes that the National Curriculum is already broad enough to allow teachers, in consultation with girls, to choose activities that will be engaging and motivating to female students.

Leaving this to one side, is there evidence to suggest that there is a clamour among girls to gain equal access to football. It is possible that ‘equal access to football’ may simply amount to the extension of imposition of a curriculum on an unwilling and un-consulted audience?

In her article: Girls should get the chance to play football at school – but PE needs a major rehaul for all students (published 4 August 2022 in The Conversation, Shrehan Lynch; Senior Lecturer in Initial Teacher Education at the University of East London notes that ‘a narrow curriculum is often informed by teachers’ own sporting love affairs.

Her view is that this can be seen in the continued recycling of traditional sports, like football, rugby, cricket and athletics for boys and dance, netball, rounders and athletics for girls’. She suggests that ‘a negotiated curriculum would be far more beneficial, giving young people choices in what they want to participate in and how’.

She also makes the point that ‘there are many other ways to make PE more modern and equitable…’ and that ‘schools often don’t realise they are engaging in highly inequitable practices and offering little choice to students, because many teachers simply mimic their own experiences of PE’.

She goes on to proffer the theory that ‘instead of seeing that their role is to ensure all young people can find ways of enjoying movement that can be carried throughout life, they (PE teachers – male and female) just continue the cycle of outdated and uninspiring PE’.

The Childwise Monitor Report 2022; based on a survey of more than 2,700 children aged 5-16 across the UK between September and November 2021 found that the sports gender gap per se had widened last year, with boys playing an extra hour on average more than girls. It suggests that girls play around half the amount of football, rugby and cricket as boys in secondary schools and that girls aged between 11-16 were offered around half the amount of coaching in traditionally ‘male’ sports last year compared to boys of the same age.

It also found that 33% of girls aged 11-16 reported playing football at secondary school, compared with 63% of boys and noted the considerable drop compared with primary-age children where 54% of girls aged 7-10 said they played football last year, compared to 80% of boys.

According to Childwise, (un)equal access is comparably prevalent in rugby in which girls (14%) in secondary school played less than half the amount as boys (29%) and cricket (12% – girls / 21% – boys). The cricket figure is, arguably, of greater concern given that cricket coaching at primary school is relatively equal; 21% of girls aged 7-10 reporting having received training in the sport last year compared to 24% of boys.

The Childwise Report showed that girls still tend to take part in more traditionally ‘feminine’ sports such as netball and gymnastics, which typically get less airtime than football, cricket and rugby. At secondary level, girls played almost five times the amount of netball last year than boys (61% of girls aged 11-16 had received coaching compared to 13% of boys). Girls also did more than three times more gymnastics than boys; 8% of boys aged 11-16 were offered training in the sport during PE compared to 30% of girls.

Perhaps it is simply team games opportunity for girls about which people should be concerned given that while girls are offered broad access to such sport in primary school, opportunities tend to drop off once they reach secondary education.

Arguably, it is more important to consider this issue in respect of the influence that football could have in respect of girl’s PE and sport in schools per se. The entire England Lionesses squad urged the Government to commit to giving girls at least two hours of PE lessons each week.

Labour has also called on the Government to introduce an “Equal Access Guarantee” for schools, which would ensure that girls and boys are offered equal access to sports during PE lessons. Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson urged the Government to update current guidance which recommends that while boys can be taught traditionally ‘male’ sports on boys-only teams, girls should be offered “comparable” sports.

The DfE insists that it is up to individual schools to decide what sports to teach, noting that swimming is the only one which is compulsory on the national curriculum.

Clearly there is no right or wrong ambition or answer, but perhaps the focus of the FA (and other sports) should start by reflecting the Lionesses’ demand that the Government commits to girls getting two hours of (preferably high quality) PE before we start dividing the spoils?

Carmel Daniel is a consultant at KKP

 

January 2023

 

NEWS RELEASE

ISSUE DATE: 22 June 2022

Measuring Community Impact: SPFL Trust research demonstrates reach and impact of SPFL associated clubs and trusts

New research compiled by KKP and published by the SPFL Trust has demonstrated the huge contribution of SPFL associated trusts and clubs (ATCs) to their local communities.

The evaluation report, entitled Measuring Community Impact: SPFL Associated Trusts and Clubs, shows that in a single year the ATCs linked to Scotland’s professional football clubs delivered more than 2,402,000 person hours of participation. This involved more than 110,000 people taking part in a wide range of activities, including more than 91,000 hours of group activity across 250 facilities.

Over the course of the evaluation year more than £5,000,000 was spent directly on community projects by associated trusts and clubs to “support and change people’s lives for the better”.

As KKP’s data analysis and geographic information systems show, 4.52 million people, 82.6% of the Scottish population, live within 10 miles of an SPFL ground, which means SPFL clubs’ ATCs are well placed to reach 93% of the most deprived population groups in the country.

Nicky Reid, chief executive officer of the SPFL Trust, said the report illustrates the importance of the work done within communities by ATCs across Scotland: “ATCs are a powerful network, well placed to support communities across Scotland. They deliver a wide range of cost-effective programmes which, even more importantly, support and change people’s lives for the better. This helpful data provided by KKP has informed our 2022-25 strategy, Football Powered, which focuses on the important role football can play in helping people to live happier, healthier, longer lives in Scotland.”

KKP chief executive John Eady commented: “KKP’s extensive experience in the field of impact evaluation and specialist performance measurement has enabled us to devise a research methodology that provides the data and analysis to demonstrate the huge community impact of SPFL clubs’ ATCs. This requires the handling of high volumes of data, and the support and commitment of a huge number of people.

“We were pleased to have been able to generate a 93% response rate from the 42 SPFL clubs This makes for comprehensive, robust data and is testament not only to the hard work and commitment of the KKP evaluation team but also to the strong working relationship we enjoyed with the team at the SPFL Trust.”

The research period ran from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020. This included the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid crisis saw extensive disruption of the activities and priorities within communities across Scotland but it was notable that the SPFL ATCs were at the forefront of community engagement in their locations. Despite all the challenges of Covid-19, not least to staffing and funding, between 1 March and 30 June 2020 ATCs delivered a total of 193,908 individual/family support initiatives.

The report Measuring Community Impact: SPFL Associated Trusts and Clubs, including details of all data and methodologies, is available via the SPFL Trust website at www.spfltrust.org.uk

 

 Notes for editors

• This evaluation of the social and community impact of ATCs was commissioned by the SPFL Trust and delivered by Knight, Kavanagh and Page. For further details of KKP’s work visit www.kkp.co.uk
• John Eady is available for interview. Please contact KKP via (0)161 764 7040 or email mail@kkp.co.uk
• KKP’s report for the EFL, Measuring the Impact of EFL Clubs in the Community, a report into the community role of club community organisations associated with professional football clubs in England is available via the EFL Trust website:
  https://www.efltrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/EFL-Trust-in-the-Community.pdf

Tim Holdsworth, senior consultant at KKP considers the impact of Rugby World Cup 2025 and what the legacy programme will mean for the women’s game.

 

The recent announcement that the Rugby World Cup 2025 will be hosted by England is good news for England rugby and great news for domestic women’s rugby. This is the biggest event in the women’s game and KKP was pleased to contribute to the work undertaken by the bid team that brought home the prize.

The RFU was keen to host the RWC competition to reflect the success of women’s rugby in England and to build on the growth of the game across the UK.

When the success of the bid was revealed the RFU noted that “since England last hosted the RWC in 2010, and won it in 2014, women’s rugby has grown exponentially”. The growth in female participation, which has led to there being some 40,000 registered women and girls playing in clubs across the country, is testament to the work undertaken by clubs and coaches at local level, and to the RFU’s investment in developing the women’s game.

RWC 2025 clearly represents another opportunity, both for the RFU to further grow the game in England and the UK, and for World Rugby (the organisation that oversees the staging of the RWC) to present the women’s game to a global audience.

As one might expect, legacy was at the centre of the RFU’s vision as RWC hosts, creating both an opportunity and a challenge.

The opportunity is clear. Within the bid document, the RFU envisaged RWC 2025 as a multi-city, multi-region event, bringing the world’s best players to venues across the country to create interest and engagement among new and existing audiences.

Equally clear is the challenge. Legacy is a much-promised element of every major event but bid document aspiration is not always matched by a long-term benefit to the sporting environment. However, we can be confident that the proposed RWC 2025 legacy will be delivered and make good on the promise of significant impact.

There are three strands to the legacy programme, which will be rolled out from 2022 through to 2025:

• a multi-generational legacy, creating players among younger women and girls, and fans among those women who did not have a chance to play;
• support for rugby development within the home unions and creation of capacity, via the recruitment of coaches and referees; and
• facility development and improvement to service the women’s game.

It is this third element of the legacy programme – the development of facilities – in which KKP has been able to play its part. Utilising our long experience of sport and leisure facility development, background working in and with rugby at all levels, and our extensive data analysis and mapping skills, KKP has been able to help the RFU focus on how investments in physical provision can help to transform the experience of girls and women playing the game.

There will be more detail in subsequent articles but this part of the legacy programme revolves around the development of new, and the upgrading of existing, changing and social spaces to ensure that they better reflect modern player expectations (and in particular female player expectations) of what sports facilities – and specifically rugby clubs – should offer. The legacy programme will encompass a range of investment approaches, from brand new exemplar changing and clubhouse facilities right through to minor improvements in showers and toilet accommodation.

This facilities programme is arguably a reflection of the fact that, notwithstanding good levels of investment across the board by the RFU and clubs themselves in respect of clubhouse provision for women, facility provision has not been able to keep pace. The thinking is that new generations of female players should not – and will not – have to endure such ‘traditional’ understandings of what constitutes appropriate environments for sport.

The RWC 2025 facility legacy programme is designed to reflect and recognise the work undertaken by many clubs, and the success they have had, in promoting and developing the women’s game. KKP’s research showed that clubs that have demonstrated their commitment to the women’s game are spread fairly evenly across the country, making the RFU’s task of equitable legacy investment allocation and programme delivery a little easier.

In delivering a proposed legacy investment process, KKP is delighted to have had the opportunity to work so closely with the RFU Facilities team and S&P Architects, all of whom went out of their way to collaborate and share their own knowledge, experience and expertise. It certainly made our job more straightforward and enjoyable.

As sport and leisure professionals, we are confident that the RWC 2025 legacy is achievable and deliverable, and that it will have a real impact on the game. As rugby fans, we can’t wait for kick-off.

 

Tim Holdsworth is a senior consultant at KKP.

Claire Fallon explains why housing development is driving a partnership approach to strategic thinking for sport and leisure.

 

KKP’s current portfolio includes numerous projects that incorporate cross-over between several aspects of strategic review. While the production of playing pitch strategies and indoor and built sport facility strategies are quite distinct in terms of tools, techniques and approaches, it is not surprising that strategic thinking with regard to one impacts upon the other. Start evaluating where your pitches are and where they might need to be, and it is not too many steps before the links with other facilities, other sports and other communities appear on the whiteboard.

This combination of strategies has become an increasingly common feature of KKP’s caseload over recent years. So too has joint commissioning by local authorities. An increasing number of projects now involve client groups comprising separate councils that come together to look strategically at the sport and leisure services that serve users and communities on both sides of council boundaries.

Most local authorities have long acknowledged that many users of their sport and leisure facilities have little understanding of, or interest in, which authority might provide and manage the specific facility they play in. It is also increasingly recognised that duplication of facilities in close geographic proximity on either side of an authority boundary is a luxury that is difficult to afford, justify or defend. At KKP we are increasingly finding that acceptance and recognition of reality is translating into practical partnerships and the co-commissioning of strategic planning.

A recently completed project on behalf of three authorities in South Worcestershire (Malvern Hills, Worcester City and Wychavon Districts) is a case in point. Working closely together via a project steering group, they commissioned KKP to produce a playing pitch strategy and an indoor and built sports facility strategy for each council area. The result was a coherent, comprehensive picture of the future of the wider area’s provision, one in which the local authority boundaries are only lightly drawn.

It has proved enlightening for the councils involved and, like much of our planning work, had housing growth as a key driver. This will create expanded or, in some cases, new communities, with new demands and increased pressures on facilities, services and transport. Developer contributions are key sources of funding that can be optimised via such cross-boundary collaboration.

In South Worcestershire the authorities were brought together by residential expansion and cross-boundary housing developments but all three were keen to ‘lean in’ to find the best options and opportunities for various facilities, including the right balance of 3G and artificial grass pitches for football and hockey.

The emerging South Worcestershire Development Plan Review (SWDPR) is also driving discussion of options for indoor facilities. While all key population centres within the area of the plan currently have adequate provision, projected population increases point to a requirement for a new leisure centre at the Worcestershire Parkway development in Wychavon District. However, the proposed strategic growth areas will require analysis and consideration of a range of facilities, including Pershore Leisure Centre, Perdiswell Leisure Centre in Worcester and Worcester Citizens Swimming Bath. The new strategic growth areas will create new demand and the northern edge of Worcestershire Parkway covered by the SWDPR is close to the city of Worcester, creating potential demand from adjacent catchment areas that lie within a 20-minute journey time.

Across the UK demand for housing is creating persuasive reasons for local authorities to work together to better shape development and to make the best of wider opportunities to improve and extend sport, leisure and cultural facilities for the whole community. However, with the need for openness and trust, genuinely collaborative partnerships can take time to create and develop. The South Worcestershire partnership was up and running quickly but some authorities accustomed to working solely within their own boundaries can be slow to arrive at the partnership table. Our experience is that such difficulties can usually be overcome once the scale and value created by shared opportunities become apparent.

Cross-boundary partnerships reflect the growing recognition that individual authorities cannot – and need not – meet every expectation of each resident, particularly in the realm of non-statutory services. Having a state-of-the-art 3G pitch is an asset but there is little point having one either side of a road that marks a council boundary.

In the Black Country KKP is working with a partnership of four local authorities with housing development again a key driver of collaboration. This area includes major population centres – Walsall, Wolverhampton and Sandwell – raising the prospect of new or improved facilities bringing significant benefit to a large number of people. Larger-scale projects also makes engaging the local and regional structures of national governing bodies of sport in potential projects that much easier.

This project is well under way and has involved the KKP team in several hundred site visits to ensure the accuracy and validity of the data required. Our approach to facility strategies means that no stone is left unturned and no site left unvisited as we build a comprehensive, detailed picture of existing facilities, including how they are rated and used.

At the ‘just starting’ end of the KKP project timescale spectrum is a commission with Colchester and Tendring councils. Plans for a new garden suburb of some 7,000 homes has fostered a partnership between the two authorities and KKP is working on extensive facility and open space strategies that will reflect the likely impact of such large-scale development.

Our work with Buckinghamshire Council is a single-authority project but its status as a new unitary authority bringing together four former districts means that many of the principles of partnership still apply. Housing development is on the agenda, as is the impact of HS2, but this process is also about this new administration looking to fully understand the area within its new boundaries and consider in full the implications of a unitary approach. The success of the recently completed indoor and built facilities strategy for the County has led to conversations with regard to Bucks taking a comparable strategic approach to its other sports, open spaces and community facilities and services.

Cross-boundary working opens a range of possibilities but increasing the size of an area does increase the scale of the project: more facilities, more people, clubs and organisations to engage, more ground to cover. At KKP we are fortunate to have multi-disciplinary capability in house and we operate at a scale which allows us to take on the largest projects. This means that we are well-positioned to manage and support the most significant and complex assignments and get involved with some really interesting schemes. Along the way it builds experience, develops skills and challenges us all to reach and maintain the highest standards.

 

Clare Fallon is a director and principal consultant with KKP.

 

April 2022

With Sport England’s Strategic Outcomes Planning Guidance now established as a key tool for the sport and leisure sector, Andrew Fawkes looks at how it is shaping new thinking and driving new projects.

 

Sport England’s Strategic Outcomes Planning Guidance (SOPG) was published in May 2019 and by the start of 2020 it was beginning to shape strategic thinking in local authorities across the country.

Covid-19 saw local authorities, their staff and departments throwing themselves into the unknown and dealing daily with what had, until the day before, been unimaginable challenges. Amid the firefighting of a public health emergency, sport and leisure professionals were managing the practicalities of shutting down facilities and services while speculating on the potentially devastating financial implications of an immediate loss of revenue.

However, during this time of crisis, many local authorities have found that SOPG principles and approaches provide a sound basis for re-evaluation of their services and assessment of the new opportunities and responsibilities being presented to the sector. For leisure operators and local authorities, lockdown, public health emergencies and the ensuing impact on funding has made SOPG an even more relevant tool to better position sport and physical activity.

in the midst of the Covid-19 response, a new understanding of, and approach to, public health had begun to emerge, underpinned by a primary focus on health and wellbeing. There was enhanced understanding of the importance of physical activity and mental health and added recognition of the link between the two. The strong community response to the pandemic created, reinvigorated or repurposed local support networks, often with sport and cultural clubs and societies at their centre. There was a renewed appreciation of sport and leisure facilities; both the indoor halls, gyms and pitches that were temporarily closed, and the parks and open spaces that were, for a while, the only available venues for activity and recreation.

In 2022, with lockdowns endured and restrictions easing, there are numerous examples of local authorities using SOPG to shape their strategic thinking in the context of new expectations, emerging opportunities and different pressures. Sport England’s funding of consultancy support for this process has helped many of them to move along this strategic pathway, particularly in light of the limited resources available.

At KKP, our Covid-19 support projects allowed us to view first-hand the immense workload and huge pressures that local authorities and leisure operators faced at the height of the pandemic. More recently we have supported delivery of SOPG processes and assisted clients to develop strategies for facilities and services that will best meet future demands.

Rossendale offers an interesting example. Rossendale Connected was the comprehensive community response to Covid – led by the local leisure trust. It encompassed local GPs and primary care networks plus a wide range of other clubs and groups. It now offers a new and engaged series of contacts for the facilities strategy that the Council, in partnership with Rossendale Leisure Trust, has commissioned following application of SOPG. As part of the facilities strategy, KKP is working with Rossendale Connected, GPs, ‘social prescribers’, youth workers and many others to consider how the local sport and leisure facility landscape should look.

Central to the process are the basic questions of such an approach (What have been your experiences? What are your current experiences? What needs to change to get and keep people active? What role should built facilities play?) but within the context of a local area that is arguably defined by its outdoor environment. Rossendale offers extensive walking and cycling, moorland and greenspace, along with a reputation for outdoor adventure, so what do built facilities need to offer and provide; and how should they fit into a precious and protected natural landscape?

Wyre, a near Lancashire neighbour of Rossendale, has also built on its SOPG review, creating a partnership board to develop a physical activity strategy and consider the long-term future of its facilities. In the post-Covid crisis context, the aim is to understand the locally specific role of physical activity within health, bring together partners and understand their collective aims, and consider how this all relates to sport and leisure facilities.

Wyre has recognised that health inequalities and physical activity advocacy must be central to the future of its services. In developing its ‘Wyre Moving More’ strategy and its subsequent facilities plans, KKP has led the community engagement process. This has involved its town partnership boards, schools, public health, Fleetwood Town Community Trust and a wide range of community clubs, groups and organisations. Collectively they are building a picture that will inform the Borough’s leisure facilities masterplan in the longer term.

Sport England’s SOPG has provided a sound framework for strategic thinking; its encouragement of links with health partnerships and the wellness agenda is particularly relevant to the current context. While it has often been difficult for physical activity to cut through the health agenda to demonstrate its impact and efficacy, the combination of the Covid-19 crisis and SOPG principles have helped many authorities and organisations to adopt different attitudes and explore different approaches. A strategic approach to physical activity, and the services and facilities that influence its uptake, is not only timely but also offers the potential for a major impact on public health.

SOPG is serving as the front end of a process that encourages authorities and operators to think about the role, function and potential of their facilities. Facilities strategies and leisure masterplans are allowing local authorities to explore realistic futures for their existing amenities, consider the potential impact on revenue and social engagement of new venues, and look at how best to enable and encourage access to physical activity for all parts of the community.

 

Andrew Fawkes is principal consultant with KKP.

 

March 2022

Helping the government of Jersey to develop and implement its new approach to community sport and wellbeing is a major project for the KKP team. Having managed this remotely for some considerable time and now able to work with project colleagues face to face, David McHendry looks at some of the aspects of the scheme that make it slightly unusual but particularly interesting.

 

Over the past couple of years KKP has been working with the government of Jersey to review and renew sport and recreation provision on the island. It is a long-term, large-scale project that includes a comprehensive replacement and upgrading of Jersey’s sport and wellbeing facilities, a management options appraisal plus related work on its playing fields, open spaces and community activity.

As a consequence, the scheme draws on a great many of KKP’s areas of experience and expertise, making it an ideal commission for a multi-disciplinary consultancy practice. While the varied professional demands of the project are familiar territory for the KKP team, some key elements of the project make it particularly interesting.

Perhaps the first aspect to note is that this is a genuinely comprehensive assignment. Jersey’s Inspiring Active Places Strategy covers all aspects of its sport and physical activity offer – at a scale to match its ambition. It envisages a ten-year implementation with the potential for significant initial investment over the next three years.

The Inspiring Active Places Strategy sets out specific plans for the Island’s sport and recreation offer based on wellbeing and physical activity rather than a simple facility-focused approach. The strategy implementation includes investment in Springfield and Oakfield leisure centres to accommodate the relocation of all sports functions from the ageing Fort Regent Leisure Centre (which is scheduled for redevelopment). Thereafter there will be major investment in Le Roquier to create a sport and wellbeing hub on the current school site; this will be informed by a review of swimming pool provision, with the aim of rebalancing provision across the island.

Consultation in respect of the first of the sites within the overall project has begun and will feed into the brief for the integrated design team, of which KKP is a core member. Supported and informed by the consultation process, this team will consider options with regard to the type, mix and location of facilities. The full extent of KKP’s broad experience in all aspects of sport, leisure and regeneration will therefore be called into play and fully exercised as part of this.

A second notable aspect of the project is our involvement for the full extent of the project timeline. While we are accustomed to being involved with large facilities (examples include the Sunderland Aquatics Centre, Glasgow’s Emirates Arena and the University of Warwick Sport and Wellness Hub), in many cases the role of the leisure consultant is solely focused at the front end: exploring feasibility and making the business case for investment. In Jersey, KKP is involved at all stages of the process and, as part of the integrated design team, will be on board through to handover.

Our commission for this work represents a long-term commitment between KKP and the Jersey government. Our role be to work alongside project management, cost consultants and architects providing support for the government team.

Another interesting element of the Jersey project has been the working protocols required over the past couple of years. KKP’s involvement commenced during the Covid-19 pandemic, which meant that everyone involved in the early development stages of Springfield and Oakfield had to embrace the use of online communication.

It was remarkable how quickly the concept of remote working became firmly embedded in working practice, but this new approach did throw up some interesting challenges. The abrupt termination of site visits and face-to-face meetings has led to Teams and Zoom quickly becoming second nature, allowing meetings to continue and projects to progress, albeit reflecting the many ongoing uncertainties of an unprecedented situation.

In 2022, with restrictions easing and in-person meetings finding their way back into diaries, it is interesting to reflect on the impact that this new approach has had. While what we used to call ‘tele-conferencing’ had been a sparsely used mechanism for years, under pandemic conditions it was quickly and widely adopted. Now it is the default option.

Managing projects via Teams and Zoom has meant that meetings tend to be more frequent but also more focused – and usually shorter. This, combined with no requirement (or indeed permission) to travel, has meant that finding space in the diary is easier. Increased availability and fewer diary clashes meant it was more straightforward to assemble the right people round the virtual table, making meetings more effective and speeding progress.

Having recently visited Jersey again after a lengthy absence, I was struck by how far we had come, not only in terms of miles travelled to get there but also the development of the project. When prevented from making the trip across the Channel, all the individuals and organisations involved with the scheme were able to continue working and make sure very little time was wasted. While in-person contact and conversations remain an important part of building effective working relationships, it is clear that remote working tools and techniques have already and will continue to have a huge impact on how projects are managed, progressed and delivered.

 

David McHendry is KKP’s managing director. Contact him at david.mchendry@kkp.co.uk

 

March 2022

NEWS RELEASE 

ISSUE DATE: 1 February 2022

 

Edge Hill University commissions KKP to lead strategic review

Edge Hill University has commissioned KKP to undertake a strategic review of its highly regarded sport and physical activity services.

Building upon the positive reputation already enjoyed by Edge Hill, the process will consider how to further enhance the role of sport and physical activity as an important aspect of university life and the student experience. In so doing it will review and consider where and how the University can build upon the social, cultural and educational role that the University already plays and further enhance its impact on the health and wellbeing of students, staff and the wider community. It will also consider the relationship between Edge Hill Sport and the courses run, and opportunities provided by, the University’s three academic faculties.

Rachel Burke, principal consultant at KKP as well as a graduate of Edge Hill University, will be leading KKP’s project team.

Rachel commented: “Sport and physical activity have long been recognised as a fundamental aspect of university life and has always been at the heart of Edge Hill. The University has been at the forefront of making sport and physical activity an intrinsic part of the student experience. This review will assist it to build on its many achievements in this field. As a former EHU student, it is of course a great thrill and an honour to be coming back to work with Edge Hill having built my own career in and around sport and physical activity. I can’t wait to get started.”

Paul Greenwood, Head of Sport and Commercial Services at Edge Hill commented: “We have always recognised and promoted sport and physical activity as an important part of university life. This review will enable us to build on our strengths and successes in this area and explore how we can better integrate sport and physical activity with other areas of university operation and the quality of the Edge Hill student experience. We are of course delighted to welcome Rachel back in her role as a respected and highly experienced sport and physical activity professional. She will notice many changes since she was here as a student and will be able to help us make sure that Edge Hill University remains at the forefront of creating positive opportunities and experiences for students, staff and the local community.”

Based on a 160-acre campus in Lancashire, Edge Hill University was recognised in two categories – Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community and Support for Students – in the 2021 Times Higher Education (THE) awards. It was also named Modern University of the Year in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022. The institution has been providing higher education since 1885, with a mission to “create opportunity from knowledge”.

This commission builds on KKP’s extensive recent work in the sector which includes strategic planning and review assignments with and on behalf of: Salford, Aston. Warwick and Birmingham universities in England, Robert Gordon and Glasgow Caledonian in Scotland, Aberystwyth and Cardiff in Wales and Ulster and UC Cork in Ireland.

 

Rachel Burke is available for interview. Please contact KKP via 0161 764 7040 or email rachel.burke@kkp.co.uk

KKP is online at www.kkp.co.uk

 

Notes for editors

• KKP is a leading UK-based multi-disciplinary national and international practice operating from offices in Manchester. It offers specialist advice and impartial, objective and creative consultancy support to a wide portfolio of clients. Full details of KKP’s work, clients and projects are available at www.kkp.co.uk.

• Edgehill University is online at www.edgehill.ac.uk. Edge Hill University’s Department of Sport and Physical Activity offers a variety of degrees including coaching, management, physical education, sport and exercise psychology, and sports therapy, which prepare students for a diverse range of careers.

• Edge Hill University Press Office can be contacted on 01695 654 372 and by email at press@edgehill.ac.uk

 

 

The Chilterns Lifestyle Centre is now officially open and everyone at KKP is pleased to be able to offer their congratulations to Buckinghamshire Council and everyone involved with the development and delivery of the project.

This is a venue of the highest quality that offers an extensive range of facilities, options and opportunities to the local community. The variety of facilities and co-location of community activities is a reflection of the involvement of local residents, clubs and groups at the earliest stages of the scheme, itself a reflection of the extensive consultation undertaken by KKP on behalf of Buckinghamshire Council.

Having previously delivered the authority’s sports facilities strategy, KKP was appointed to assess the options in respect of a new community leisure centre hub project to replace the Chiltern Pools facility, which had been built in 1965. After undertaking a detailed feasibility evaluation, including outline costs and plans for a high-quality venue that would enhance usage and programme breadth, KKP then led a full public consultation process, which brought in nearly 2,500 responses.

For David McHendry, KKP’s managing director, this consultation was a crucial element of the success of the project. “The consultation demonstrated to local residents and users that it was possible to sensitively fit the range of co-located facilities included on the preferred site, while ensuring that the integrity of adjacent open space and the needs of the many interested stakeholders were met,” he said. “The result was strong support from elected members and the community for the proposed specification.

“The Chilterns Lifestyle Centre project demonstrates the benefits of co-location and the synergy achieved by a complementary range of community-focused activities brought together under one roof. One key operational challenge was to ensure that key user groups would be able to benefit from a centralised catering offer and extensive ancillary facilities without losing their identity. This has been achieved within the new design.”

This is a remarkable new venue and a great achievement. Congratulations to everyone involved.

You can find all the details of the site via Everyone Active at:

Chilterns Lifestyle Centre

NEWS RELEASE

ISSUE DATE: 30 November 2021

England Hockey commissions KKP to review and update the national facilities strategy

England Hockey, the national governing body (NGB) for the sport of hockey in England, has commissioned KKP to review and update a comprehensive national facilities strategy that will help to secure and enhance the future of the game.

The strategy and related action plan will be based on the key principles of: being club-focused; providing detailed analysis of current hockey facilities; and optimising participation by further developing the mechanisms England Hockey uses to assess demand for facilities to service match play and training provision for the various formats and levels of the game.

Announcing the partnership between England Hockey and KKP, Rich Beer, Development Director at England Hockey, commented:

“The England Hockey national facilities strategy is a hugely important tool for us in directing our work to shape the future of the game. The review with KKP will refresh and update a more detailed and comprehensive strategic approach based on the most accurate data and informed analysis, providing a clear action plan for facilities across the country. It will incorporate identified priorities for investment in new facility development, existing site renewal and upgrading, in addition to how we manage club support for facilities and potential strategic partnerships.

“Strategy delivery will help England Hockey to help clubs to get more people playing more often at all levels. The hockey community needs to work collectively to justify provision of facilities and operate effectively making sure pitches are well used. This refreshed strategy will help us meet the challenges and make the most of the upcoming opportunities to the benefit of the future of the game.”

Paul Ashton, who is heading up this assignment for KKP, welcomed the opportunity to work with England Hockey on such an important national project:

“The updated facilities strategy will provide a detailed assessment of hockey facilities across England, providing data relating to demand, critical pitch supply, capacity and the mechanisms via which England Hockey maintains its already very strong intelligence platform about venues to play the game. It will include analysis and assessment of current stock status and development potential. Our extensive experience of playing pitch strategies and facilities planning, aligned to KKP’s industry-leading database and geographic information systems (GIS), will assist us to further develop the sophistication with which current England Hockey facility provision data is analysed and updated by area, club type, playing surface and condition.

“This, along with user consultation and stakeholder interviews, will create a detailed, reliable picture of the current state of the game and, going forward, enable England Hockey to continue to take informed decisions about future provision.”

“KKP’s facilities strategy work for all clients is founded on processes that rely on a thoroughly researched, detailed evidence base. We have worked extensively with England Hockey over the last 10 years and are looking forward to delivering a high-quality updated strategy that leaves it optimally placed to work with its own membership, local authorities, schools and a range of other partners. The key is to ensure that the strategy helps the sport to develop a modern, fit for purpose, appropriately located network of hockey facilities to service the game’s current and future needs.”

For further information and comment please contact:

Paul Ashton is a principal consultant at KKP. Paul can be contacted via email at paul.ashton@kkp.co.uk or by phone at 0161 764 7040

KKP is online at www.kkp.co.uk

England Hockey is online at www.englandhockey.co.uk

 

Notes for editors

• England Hockey is responsible for the management and development of the sport from grassroots to elite activities. It has a membership comprising clubs (800-plus), counties (45) and the areas (8) which are members of it. Around 150,000 individuals play regularly in the club system with a further 15,000 playing in the university and college sector. Over 15,000 coaches, umpires and officials are supported and developed by England Hockey.
• England Hockey is also the nominated country for Great Britain Hockey and is responsible for assessing and preparing Great Britain (GB) squads to qualify for and participate in the Olympics.
• KKP is a leading UK-based multi-disciplinary national and international practice operating from offices in Manchester. It offers specialist advice and impartial, objective and creative consultancy support to a wide portfolio of clients. Full details of KKP’s work, clients and projects are available at www.kkp.co.uk

Swim England’s recent report, A Decade of Decline, paints a bleak picture of the future of swimming provision, challenging national and local government to recognise the need to replace ageing pools. Rachel Burke considers whether the thinking process might be just as important as the numbers.

 

Swim England’s recent report, titled A Decade of Decline: the Future of Swimming Pools in England, has highlighted the increasing pressure on sport and leisure facility finances. Coming at the stage of the Covid crisis that it did, the report has secured extensive coverage and raised the issue of the need for investment in facilities and opportunities to swim and be physically active.

It noted that more than 200 pools have closed, either temporarily or permanently, since the pandemic began and predicts that continuation of the current trend could see a 40% reduction in the number of pools in England by the end of the decade. Some 1,800 could be lost and, Swim England argues, too few new pools are being built to replace the facilities built and opened in the 1960s and 70s.

With the pandemic adding further pressure to stretched local authority finances and with physical activity a demonstrably important factor in mitigating the impact of Covid, Swim England’s predictions and warnings are timely and well founded. However, this is not a new issue. The debate about replacement of pools, in particular those opened at the point of local government reorganisation in the early 1970s, was in full flow well before the end of the 20^th century. For the ‘more experienced’ members of the sector, it is sobering to note that even facilities built in 1990 are now more than 30 years old. Given that refurbishment and replacement is part of the natural process of facility management and provision, this problem is not going to go away.

One element of the report that did not gain many column inches (or the digital equivalent) was the emphasis on the importance of needs assessments and feasibility studies. “We encourage local authorities to conduct an analysis of their pool stock to understand whether they have the right pools in the right places to the meet the needs of the community, both now and in the future,” the report states. It also notes the value of Sport England’s Strategic Outcomes Planning Guidance (SOPG) and suggests that this should be made available to all local authorities.

This is perhaps the key point of the report. Data gathering and diligent analysis do not often make for attention-grabbing headlines but, as a consultancy practice with a reputation built on delivery of accurate needs assessments, feasibility strategies and supporting clients to implement their findings, KKP is pleased to endorse Swim England’s message. Having worked with numerous local authorities on SOPG, we concur with the value of Sport England’s approach. We also know, from work on projects that vary from the smallest community pools to the largest international multi-pool competition facilities, that getting “the right pools in the right places” is never quite as easy as this phrase makes it sound.

A substantial volume of work goes into the process. While facility development may never be an exact science, the application of extensive dataset/GIS-based demand evaluation, along with club, community and stakeholder consultation and decades of experience, makes for a better chance of delivering attractive, appropriately located, efficient and sustainable facilities that meet community needs and contribute to the wellbeing and liveability of the areas served.

The Decade of Decline report offers a clear challenge to government and local authorities in the face of the harsh realities of sport and leisure provision but it also suggests, albeit indirectly, the need for a new approach. If the closure of old pools is accelerating, new pools are needed and finances are tight, what should we be doing differently?

The obvious starting point is that, in general terms, stand-alone pools have had their day. It may also be that teaching pools (of larger size and with moveable floors) will be the key component of new developments, delivering lessons, a variety of warmer-pool, water-based exercise classes and options to cater imaginatively for the growing number of older people. This may mean some main pools having fewer lanes and becoming more significant adjuncts of the fitness offer as well as catering for club sessions, lane swimming and recreational use.

Swimming pool programming is a significant challenge. Balancing the demands of learn to swim, aquatic club use and casual swimmers is not easy without access to substantial water space. Where water space is limited, there is, in almost every case, an impassioned debate: clubs typically want more pool time for training, while operators are also looking to cater for the needs of casual and recreational swimmers.

The more financially ‘sustainable’ the pool needs to be, the more challenging the programming, especially at peak times. The need for income generation favours (full fee-based) swimming lessons and, to a lesser extent, club use. This can, however, be to the detriment of access for casual swimmers and those who need additional support to gain access to water-based activity.

Next might be a reassessment of the role of school sites. Community use of school facilities has a long history but the recent trend has been away from dual-use offers, in part because of the variety of facility management arrangements now ‘complicating’ this option. Access to existing dry-side school sports facilities, particularly sports halls, is adversely affected by the fact that they are commonly reserved by schools to host exams, school productions and cater for other large-space events.

One question worth asking: with so much housing development pressure on brownfield and green spaces, why not consider taking new pools to schools? In many areas, with the advent of high-capacity artificial grass, they may well have space to site a replacement pool. With good management and intelligent programming, it may be possible to use such a process to bring all their sports provision into more legally binding, accessible, year-round community use.

Larger primary schools may also offer co-location benefits. Where plans are still being drawn up for 1,000-pupil primary schools, why not explore the potential to include a teaching pool, fitness, a sports hall and perhaps a half-size artificial grass pitch and operate this on a joint-use basis with a partner for which extra-curricular time pressures will be far less onerous? The key and significant side benefit would be that learning to swim should receive the priority it surely merits.

Moving onto this issue, if school swimming lesson provision is a primary concern it is surely essential to consider its effectiveness per se. A substantial proportion of programmes take all children whether they can already swim or not, give them limited water time and must accommodate large numbers of pupils. The swimming value of the measured outcome of school swimming reflects its shortcomings. This is a key point because if this does not change, irrespective of the number, quality and modernity of pools, it will be the same children and young people who miss out.

If we are going to invest in pools, some of the programming focus surely needs to be on the people of all ages who cannot currently swim. The investment process and associated scheduling, marketing, pricing, leisure card and contractual management arrangements must balance commercial imperatives with the need to recognise that the majority of people who cannot swim, and therefore cannot enjoy the direct associated benefits that emanate from safety and water confidence, are, and always have been, from low-income families and/or disadvantaged communities.

Seen within the context of the Covid crisis and local government finances, it is undoubtedly true that a great many swimming pools in England and the rest of the UK face an uncertain future. Many need to replaced; even more need refurbishment. A century of investment in public swimming facilities has demonstrated the value of swimming to public health and wellbeing. However, if that investment is to continue it is essential that fundamental questions are asked before more money is ‘poured into the ground’: why do we need pools; who are they for; what should they achieve; how must they be managed and programmed; and what should they look like?

The answers are as varied as the communities and interests that each swimming pool serves but, with a few decades of experience, we know which questions to ask.

 

Rachel Burke is a principal consultant with KKP.

 

A Decade of Decline: the Future of Swimming Pools in England is published by Swim England and available via the Swim England website:

https://www.swimming.org/swimengland/decadeofdecline/

During the Covid-19 crisis active travel has emerged as one of the leading influences on urban policy and design. Andy Fawkes and Chris MacFarlane consider the background to a renewed focus on public transport, walking and cycling, and why it strikes a chord with so much of KKP’s strategy work.

 

Active travel has always been a fundamental part of KKP’s approach to facility strategies of all kinds and, while some of the terminology may have evolved over the 30-plus years KKP has been working with clients to improve their facilities and environments, the fundamental principles of how and why people move are largely unchanged.

Policy drivers, such as climate emergency, air quality and health inequalities, have been moving active travel up the agenda for many organisations and authorities for some time. The impact and experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic then added a new perspective. Now a different balance between public and private transport has become part of a national debate, with walking and cycling increasingly recognised as more than just a convenient way of getting from A to B for a minority of people.

Travel and transport have always been key components of the processes that underpin KKP’s approach to strategies for indoor and outdoor facilities of all kinds. The four pillars of our strategic approach are quantity, quality, availability and accessibility, making walk and drive times, along with public transport, part of the mix for any project. There is always a balance between car use and active travel but in more densely populated environments walking, riding and taking the bus or tram are important factors.

In recent years central government policy has reflected growing interest in renegotiating the balance between motor traffic and active travel. In 2017 the Department for Transport issued technical guidance for local authorities on local cycling and walking infrastructure plans (LCWIP) with the aim of doubling cycling rates and significantly increasing walking rates by 2025. The guidance encourages councils to deliver better safety, better mobility and better streets “to make walking and cycling the natural choices for shorter journeys or as part of a longer journey”.

In July 2020, in the midst of a pandemic that had challenged attitudes to so many aspects of our lives, the Department for Transport published Gear Change, “a bold vision for cycling and walking” that it hopes will bring a “travel revolution in our streets, towns and communities.” It was accompanied by Local Transport Note 1/20 Cycle Infrastructure Design, providing national guidance for the design and implementation of cycle schemes. For the first time national standards for cycle infrastructure are laid out: “There are five core design principles which represent the essential requirements to achieve more people travelling by cycle or on foot, based on best practice both internationally and across the UK. Networks and routes should be Coherent; Direct; Safe; Comfortable and Attractive.” [LTN 1/20 1.5.1]

The UK’s big cities have been leading the way in accepting the challenge presented by national government policy. Birmingham recently announced proposals to remove through traffic from the city centre, reversing half a century of transport planning decisions that had given primacy to private motor travel. Manchester is well advanced in its plans to promote cycling as part of an extensive reimagining of travel in and around the city. Backed by the mayor, Chris Boardman has used his position as the city’s first transport commissioner to develop and promote the Bee Network, planned to become the UK’s largest walking and cycling network.

Manchester is a good example of the recognition of, and a new emphasis on, the link between active travel and physical activity. The city has a network of sport and leisure facilities that are well used. Facilities with national and international recognition are part of Manchester’s plan to attract visitors and investment but they are also central to an ongoing campaign to encourage and enable local residents to make these centres their own. Greater Manchester’s Moving More strategy is building on the city and region’s achievements in terms of its facilities and transport networks to help address significant health equalities. With car ownership comparatively low, public transport, walking and cycling are important aspects not only of accessibility but also the city’s health.

Beyond the big cities, a shift in recognition of the potential of walking and cycling is also having an impact. The LCWIP guidance is fairly recent in policy terms but it is increasingly part of local authority thinking about travel, accessibility, planning and design. While an LCWIP imposes new requirements on councils, it also has begun to have a positive influence on design and implementation of schemes as well as providing a route to funding.

If architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right and God is in the details, then the new walking and cycling policy documents offer plenty of opportunities to observe the divine. LTN 1/20 has enough detail to entrance even the most dedicated infrastructure aficionado. Setting standards against which every cycle infrastructure project will be judged, LTN 1/20 could, if properly embraced, transform the UK’s cycling landscape. The LCWIP guidance provides a route through the synergies and integrations, including the stakeholders and data, to create a public realm that people can use safely, confidently and enjoyably. The Propensity to Cycle tool within the LCWIP guidance provides access to the skills and abilities required for new approaches to accessible and equitable spaces, offering mapping and impact modelling to assess the impact that policy and design decisions could have. This tool also includes guidance on making the business case for walking and cycling, an essential part of the armoury of change.

Facility planning is always a balance: of buildings and behaviours; of mapping and mindsets. These new policies, both national and local, driven by issues of transport, health and environment have begun to shape the planning process and have the potential to change the way our towns and cities look and feel. The reasons people move around may still be the same and our four strategy pillars of quantity, quality, availability and accessibility remain intact but there are now huge opportunities to change the way we understand our urban spaces and the way movement shapes them and us.

Policy statements are traditionally long on lofty visions and bold statements but a new understanding of what makes walking and cycling easier and more appealing as part of active travel could have a profound impact on the culture of our cities. Giving more thought and more space to two feet and two wheels could be the catalyst for a low-key revolution.

 

Andy Fawkes and Chris MacFarlane are principal consultants with KKP

 

November 2021

 

Notes and references:

Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans: Technical Guidance for Local Authorities
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/908535/cycling-walking-infrastructure-technical-guidance-document.pdf

Gear Change: A bold vision for cycling and walking
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/904146/gear-change-a-bold-vision-for-cycling-and-walking.pdf

Cycle Infrastructure Design: Local Traffic Note 1/20
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/951074/cycle-infrastructure-design-ltn-1-20.pdf

The Bee Network
https://activetravel.tfgm.com/bee-network-vision/

The Propensity to Cycle Tool
https://www.pct.bike/

Tim Holdsworth considers the challenges facing a sport in transition and what it might mean for facility provision, management and planning.

 

How do you solve a problem like speedway? It is a sport with a long history and a small but dedicated fan base. It offers the speed and excitement of motor sport in the raw. Small, local venues put the spectators close to the action, immersed in the noise, smells and thrills of motorcycle racing stripped to the bare essentials.

However, for all the enthusiasm of its aficionados, speedway is undeniably a sport in decline. Participation and audience numbers have been dropping consistently for a decade or more. Its clubs – even British Speedway Premiership clubs – are struggling to survive. Many of the venues that host speedway events are in crisis and TV coverage has tailed off, taking with it a vital source of the sport’s revenue.

We are a long way from speedway’s heyday, when top riders were household names. If you were to find anyone able to name a top rider now, it is more likely that they would be able to recall a champion of the past, probably from the last century, rather than name the current world champion.

Small sports with limited participation numbers and niche audiences can, and do, survive in a modern sporting context but no one would deny that it is a huge challenge to make it work.

The precarious nature of speedway’s finances makes it vulnerable to competing interests, not least from developers with an eye on venues that seem ripe for alternative use. In recent decades significant numbers of speedway tracks have been lost, along with the teams that used to draw the crowds; 15 speedway teams have folded since 2005.

It is a similar story with other sports that use or share such track venues. Stock car racing and greyhound racing have also experienced decline, making the viability of the stadia that host them (individually or collectively) increasingly precarious. In recent years even the most ardent speedway fan could understand why increasing numbers of people might see speedway venues as something of an anachronism in the context of the modern sporting experience.

All this might suggest that when reviewing the viability of a speedway venue in the face of proposals for redevelopment, the planning authorities would be faced with the proverbial open-and-shut case. However, for any developers eyeing a speedway stadium as a prime target, the nature of the sport creates something of a conundrum.

Sport England’s national planning policy framework makes it clear that open space, sports and recreation buildings, facilities and land should not be built on unless it can be shown that: the existing facility is surplus to requirements; are to be replaced or improved; or that alternative sports provision is to be created.

The argument that a speedway track is surplus to requirements is made problematic by virtue of its rarity. If so many speedway tracks have been lost, its supporters can argue that those left are all the more important; with only a few remaining, how can any existing track be said to be surplus to requirements?

Replacing or improving facilities to make them more attractive to spectators and better suited to other uses is an option but one that comes with a hefty price tag. Who would be willing to invest the millions likely to be needed to create a modern sporting venue if the sports that it will host are struggling to find an audience and a business model to make them viable?

Alternative sports provision might seem to be a more attractive approach, particularly in the promotion of and engagement in sport and physical activity across the wider community, but again the investment required to create new sports venues is significant and not often found at the top of a developer’s priority list.

If developers were kept at bay and there were sufficient funds and support to create a modern speedway venue, could such a stadium be viable? The experience of the National Speedway Stadium in Manchester suggests not. In 2016 Manchester City Council invested £7m in the stadium, which includes a 3G pitch as part of the offer. However, the speedway club has reportedly struggled to meet its obligations as the venue’s key tenant. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, it seems speedway was not in a position to make the most of an updated facility.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a sport with a long and vibrant history is facing a very difficult future. As clubs continue to struggle to survive, audiences go on falling while the other sports that used to make speedway venues viable – most commonly stock car racing and greyhound racing – face similar hardships. On this evidence, speedway would seem to be a sport from the past.

But perhaps all is not lost; at least not quite, not yet. Other sports have shown that it is possible to create a future for a sport with a long history. Most evolve to meet different circumstances and expectations. Bigger sports than speedway are constantly addressing the need to find new markets and new audiences; squash, cricket and triathlon, to name just a few. Some manage to reverse their own decline by transforming their marketing and spectator experience; snooker and darts might be examples.

Small sports with limited participation numbers and niche audiences can, and do, survive in a modern sporting context but no one would deny that it is a huge challenge to make it work. Even before the pandemic, a great many sports and venues were considering their options in the face of an uncertain future. As a sport, speedway would seem to have more problems than most. It will need radical reinvention if it is to find some new household names to sit alongside those slipping out of the collective sporting memory.

 

 

Tim Holdsworth is a senior consultant with KKP. Contact him at tim.holdsworth@kkp.co.uk

The new Activity Alliance strategy is an important document but real change for disability inclusion sport requires a counter-intuitive approach to what is not only a sector of society that consistently misses out but also a significant market sector. John Eady makes the social and business case for inclusivity.

 

The Covid crisis has spawned a whole range of challenges and reassessments, not least access to, and the importance of, being physically active. Across the UK the pandemic has had a real impact on activity levels and for every heart-warming story of people discovering the joys of the great outdoors there are many more (largely untold) tales of those for whom lockdown has reinforced the absence of, or further limited, their opportunities to be active.

This is highlighted by data presented by the Activity Alliance, the national charity for disability inclusion sport. Its new three-year strategy, titled Achieving Fairness, takes access to opportunity for activity as its starting point and cites a poll in which 72% of disabled people agree that lockdown has made this less fair for disabled people.

Addressing declining levels of activity for disabled people is a main strand of the strategy but the Activity Alliance rightly reminds us that the problem existed before the Covid-19 crisis; before the pandemic disabled people were twice as likely to be inactive as non-disabled people.

Achieving Fairness sets out the ambition to close this activity gap “within a generation” and explains how the Activity Alliance intends to do this. There are two clear goals: changing attitudes towards disabled people and embedding inclusive practice in sport and activity. These inform four key objectives: championing the voices of disabled people; using expertise and insight to educate, inform and influence; addressing inequalities via collaboration, engagement and delivery; and maximising the effective use of investment.

This is all very well but there is an argument that this strategy is a little too measured (or perhaps unmeasured) in its challenge to sport and leisure providers. The sport and leisure sector needs to be challenged and the key to genuine inclusivity for disabled people lies in the numbers. For example, 18% of the working-age population in Britain is disabled, as defined as by the Equality Act 2010 [Source: Employers’ Forum on Disability]. So, even leaving out older people (among whom this the proportion rises substantially) and the under 18s, there is a market of seven million people with spending power, a market that is, to a substantial degree, unserved.

Where I would take issue with the Activity Alliance is its headline aim related to changing attitudes to disability and disabled people. The fact that its polling shows that 85% of adults agree that attitudes to disability need to improve is, I would argue, indicative of a general positivity. The real problem is a Rumsfeld-ian one: in the most part those who matter don’t know what they don’t know.

This lack of knowledge, context and comprehension has a direct effect. Providers and those who are (or should be) charged with responsibility to make a relevant offer to attract and accommodate disabled people have no concept of the overall scale of the market in their locality; nor do many have a clear idea, in performance terms, of what attracting an appropriate proportion of the ‘disability market’ should look like.

It is simply insufficient to have facilities accessible to, and staff trained to work with, disabled people if no one with a disability is turning up. Why shouldn’t facility operators and other deliverers of services commissioned by local authorities be charged with responsibility to attract and entertain a predetermined proportion of this market?

That said, it is also incumbent upon local authorities in particular, but also others, to start to develop and facilitate communications mechanisms that enable people with disabilities and other defined needs to be ‘in the system’, offering the option to know about, attend or at the very least turn down options to take part.

Sam Orde, the chair of Activity Alliance, is quite right when he says, “It is not right or fair that disabled people continue to miss out on the huge benefits of being active.” But it not just a case of the sport and leisure sector failing to serve the needs of a significant part of the community. Disabled people as a ‘market’ are simply not on the radar so it is hardly surprising that not enough is being done to cater for them. In addition, ignoring or excluding a major market sector is bad business and a failure of fiscal responsibility.

The key to inclusivity is for the sport and leisure sector to place the right to be informed alongside the practical commercial value of the one fifth of the population that has a disability. Embedding inclusive practices within sport and physical activity requires what some may see as a counter-intuitive approach. Instead of treating disabled people as a sector of the community that needs help, the sport and leisure sector should, perhaps, treat disabled people as a market sector estimated to spend £80 billion per year [Source: DWP], a sector to be targeted using all the modern marketing technology and techniques at our disposal.

Being inclusive is about the numbers. If 20% of the catchment area for your facilities has a disability, how many disabled users and members should you have? And how many have you got? In the gap lies the key to greater inclusivity, better business, improved social return on investment and achieving fairness.

 

John Eady is chief executive at KKP

Find the Activity Alliance online at http://www.activityalliance.org.uk/

Find the Achieving Fairness strategy document via the Activity Alliance website at http://www.activityalliance.org.uk/about-us/our-work/strategy

 

 

June 2021

David McHendry explains how KKP has helped shape a vision for a new kind of community facility and a new approach to sustainability.

 

Chiltern Pools had presented the then Chiltern District Council with a problem familiar to many local authorities across the UK. Built in 1965, the centre was showing its age, not only aesthetically but also structurally. Key parts of the building required urgent repair or replacement and it had become uneconomic to maintain and run over the long term.

Having previously delivered the Authority’s sports facilities strategy, KKP was appointed to assess the options in respect of a new community leisure centre hub project in Amersham to replace Chiltern Pools plus other older community buildings on the wider site. We delivered a detailed feasibility evaluation, outline costs and plans for a high-quality venue that would enhance usage and programme breadth, substantially improve income generation and reduce ongoing maintenance costs.

The new building will offer a wide range of sport, leisure and community facilities, including:

• 8-lane 25m competition pool
• teaching/diving pool
• children’s splash pad
• café
• fitness suite/dance studios/spin studio
• sports hall
• squash courts
• climbing wall and bouldering
• spa zone and treatment rooms
• clip ‘n’ climb kids zone
• soft play and party rooms
• library
• community hall and meeting rooms
• children’s pre-school provision.

On behalf of the Council, KKP then launched a full public consultation process. This included developing consultation materials, organising and attending numerous public and stakeholder meetings, utilising social media and conducting an online survey, all underpinned by extensive local publicity. This secured an excellent response rate of nearly 2,500 responses.

This demonstrated to local residents and users that it was possible to sensitively fit the range of co-located facilities included on the preferred site while ensuring that the integrity of adjacent open space and the needs of the many interested stakeholders were met. The result was strong support from elected members and the community for the proposed specification.

The Chiltern Lifestyle Centre project demonstrates the benefits of co-location and the synergy achieved by a complementary range of community-focused activities brought together under one roof. One key operational challenge was to ensure that key user groups would be able to benefit from a centralised catering offer and extensive ancillary facilities without losing their identity. This has been achieved within the new design.

The new facility will operate as a community hub accommodating a wide range of activities and users, from sports clubs, U3A programmes and community groups to diving and competition swimming, fitness and a spa offering. The balance of commercially focused and community activity will ensure that it operates at a healthy surplus.

KKP supported the Council to develop the scheme in more detail and test the various adjacencies and co-location advantages of/for various groups and activities. We also led on the consultation and negotiation with Fields in Trust and the Town Council in respect of the need to reconfigure the town’s protected open space to enable the development. The Lifestyle Centre, along with the improvements to the centres at Chesham and Chalfont St Peter, will significantly reduce CO₂ emissions.

Working on this options appraisal/feasibility scheme was an exciting and testing project for the KKP team. It enabled us to demonstrate the breadth of our  expertise in concept development and testing, financial modelling and in the delivery of complex design requirements, extensive public consultation and innovative business solutions. Now being taken forward by the new Buckinghamshire Council, we can’t wait to see it welcome its first visitors towards the end of 2021.

 

David McHendry is managing director at KKP.

Contact David at david.mchendry@kkp.co.uk

 

 

April 2021

Chris MacFarlane explains how KKP has helped two local authorities assess the role of open space in the planning of new residential developments.

 

The open space assessment and strategy undertaken by KKP on behalf of the boroughs of Cheltenham and Tewkesbury was a large-scale project that recognised and demonstrated the importance of green space and recreational provision in the planning of major residential developments.

This project was a substantial joint commission on behalf of two adjacent local authorities and the study, along with the underpinning audit findings, were an important element of both councils’ local plans. The project was also an integral part of identifying and regulating their open space infrastructure.

The context of this open space assessment and strategy was a joint core strategy based upon the need to develop 20,000-plus new homes across the area, plus further homes in Gloucester. In addition to the preparation and justification of open spaces standards, the project incorporated specific work linked to the green spaces and recreational provision, as well as the social sustainability needs of major new settlements, including one comprising 5,000-plus dwellings on the border of the two authorities.

The assessment reports used information gathered from extensive local research, site assessments and consultation with a wide range of key agencies, parish councils and community representatives. Combined with exhaustive data analysis and GIS mapping, the reports provided analysis of demand based upon population distribution, planned growth and consultation findings to provide detail of provision across the area, its condition, distribution and overall quality.

In addition to producing evidence to inform the two local plans and linked supplementary planning documents, KKP produced a specific toolkit for the two authorities setting out exactly how best to utilise, interpret and translate the information provided to set local standards and inform Section 106 and CIL-based developer contributions. This is providing a basis for securing open space facilities through new housing development and informing negotiation with developers for contributions towards the provision of appropriate open space facilities and their long-term maintenance.

The Cheltenham and Tewkesbury project is just one of some 30 open spaces assessments and strategies produced by KKP over the last few years on behalf of clients ranging from London boroughs (including Wandsworth and Richmond-on-Thames), core cities (such as Liverpool) to highly rural districts (including Copeland) and authorities within or incorporating parts of England’s national parks.

 

Chris MacFarlane is a principal consultant with KKP.

 

Contact Chris at christopher.macfarlane@kkp.co.uk

Andrew Fawkes explains the background to this process and how it can enable local authorities to plot a course for physical activity and sport through choppy waters.

 

Knight, Kavanagh and Page (KKP) has now delivered six Strategic Outcomes Planning Guidance (SOPG) diagnostic reports in the last year and is about to commence on a comparable equity impact assessment in Tameside and another, which will be considering the issues in a Welsh context, for Bridgend. Application of this guidance, and the associated research and consultation, is definitely helping these authorities to articulate the connections and contributions of sport and physical activity to their wider objectives.

The SOPG is essentially a four-step guide which enables the development of an effective case for investment in physical activity and sport. Its four headline themes are:

• develop shared local strategic outcomes for your place
• understand your community and your place
• identify how the outcomes can be delivered sustainably
• secure investment commitment to outcome delivery.

Sport England’s new 10-year strategy, Uniting the Movement, places tackling inequality (which has been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic) at the heart of its approach. This reinforces the need for local authorities to work collaboratively across their own key services and with external agencies to articulate a clear role for physical activity and sport in the delivery of broader local and corporate outcomes.

In the light of the financial and operational strain that Covid-19 continues to cause on health, mental health, adult social care and education services, the themes of sustainable recovery and local authority understanding of the positive mental and physical health impact of built leisure assets and related services to local communities are central to this work.

KKP’s role in the process is to assess, gauge and articulate the evidence presented by council staff, health professionals, community practitioners and local authority elected members with regard to the often significant public health challenges faced. Many councils are, for example, trying to work out how to tackle the often very significant gaps in healthy life expectancy between key local neighbourhoods.

Evidence gathered via consultation is supplemented by analysis of strategic documents, such as the authority’s local plan, health and wellbeing strategy or sport/leisure facilities strategy, to provide a rounded assessment of the point the council has reached on its journey along the SOPG path.

In terms of what ‘good’ looks like, we have found that the insight provided by external partners, such as housing associations, public health practitioners and social prescribers, often delivers the best insight into the extent to which a place either meets the requirements of the SOPG guidance or where there are gaps. Rossendale Connected is an excellent example of the type of community response to the pandemic that has provided telling insight to the SOPG process.

Not every local authority can approach the four-step process in a linear fashion, especially given the current volatile environment and the fact that they have essentially been in crisis mode over the past 12 months.

However, our diagnosis can, for example, confirm the findings of a pre-existing built facility strategy that clearly sets out where new-build leisure provision should be placed while at the same time pointing out that further insight is needed to help specify exactly what type of physical activity will be preferred by local residents as they emerge from a lengthy period of restrictions.

What makes KKP the best option for advising a local authority on the SOPG journey? A key strength is the emphasis placed on, and the effort applied to, the consultation phase. This is allied to the depth of experience and expertise within our team.

In addition, all our work emphasises the high value of interpersonal conversations with stakeholders and key officers. This is analysed alongside the collection and analysis of all available data to create a complete project picture. Presentation is then underpinned by illustrative and informative maps generated by our sector-leading GIS team.

There is little doubt that the SOPG process is having a positive impact by assisting local authorities to adopt a clear, strategic and sustainable approach to investment in sport and physical activity facilities and services.

 

Andrew Fawkes is a principal consultant at KKP.

 

Rossendale Connected: http://rossendaleconnected.org/

NEWS RELEASE

ISSUE DATE: 9 March 2021

KKP maintains ISO 9001 certification record
15 successive years of quality assurance for sport and leisure sector’s leading consultancy practice

 

KKP has confirmed its 15^th successive year of ISO 9001 certification. Announcement of the award comes after a short, Covid 19-related delay in the award’s operations and represents an unbroken record of success for the sport and leisure sector’s longest-established consultancy practice.

The latest ISO 9001 certification reflects KKP’s commitment to excellence and the merits of the company’s associated support structures, with ISO assessors describing KKP’s project management process as “excellent… premier league standard”.

David McHendry, KKP managing director, commented: “We were delighted to receive confirmation of the latest certification. It reflects the high levels of effort put in by every member of our team. KKP has always put commitment to quality at the centre of its approach. Quality draws upon a wide range of skills and behaviours but we believe attitude, communication and a commitment to achieving the best for our clients are the foundations upon which it is built.”

McHendry continued: “KKP first acquired ISO 9001 quality certification for project management, systems and delivery in 2007. We have been successfully reassessed every year since. ISO drives continual review and improvement across all work areas, subjecting us to regular interrogation and oversight by expert external assessors. Ultimately, however, the quality of our operation is judged by our clients. This has been the basis of KKP’s approach for more than 30 years and it continues to drive what we do.”

This renewed ISO 9001 certification follows KKP’s Cyber Essentials accreditation in January this year. It is another aspect of the company’s commitment to offering the highest possible quality of service to clients.

Notes for editors

• David McHendry and John Eady are available for interview. Please contact KKP via (0)161 764 7040 or email mail@kkp.co.uk
• Full details of KKP, including its projects and clients, are available at www.kkp.co.uk
• ISO is an independent, non-governmental international organisation with a membership of 165 national standards bodies.
• ISO 9001 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is the only standard in the family of quality management standards that can be certified. ISO 9001 is based on seven quality management principles: customer focus; leadership; engagement of people; process approach; improvement; evidence-based decision-making; and relationship management.
• Cyber Essentials is a government-backed scheme to help organisations guard the organisation and their clients against cyber attacks.

NEWS RELEASE

ISSUE DATE:  26 November 2020

Launch of FA/Football Foundation Local Football Facility Plan project “landmark for national grassroots game”
Two-year project delivers 300-plus reports identifying 5,000 community schemes

 

The Football Foundation announcement of its intent to start implementing the recommendations set out in its local football facility plans (LFFPs) which cover the whole of England represents a landmark for the  grassroots game, according to Knight, Kavanagh and Page (KKP), the consultancy practice that undertook the research and consultation, and wrote the plans upon which the project is based.

The announcement (made by the Football Foundation in association with the FA) on 19 November 2020 confirms their intent to react to and deliver the detailed programme of improvements to football facilities needed across every local authority area in England. The Football Foundation is now starting the task of working with local councils and other partners to put the proposals outlined in these plans into place.

David McHendry, KKP managing director, commented: “The announcement of the start of the implementation phase of the LFFP project represents the culmination of more than two years’ work by the team at KKP. Together the Football Foundation, the FA, the DCMS, the English Football League and the Premier League recognised the need for a concerted effort to improve grass pitches and increase the quantity and quality of artificial grass pitches and related facilities to sustain and develop football at community level. Commissioning KKP to prepare the report for each local authority area, delivering the extensive research, consultation, data collection and analysis required to underpin each report, was a reflection of the company’s expertise in this field and our experience producing playing pitch strategies. It was a major undertaking that KKP was pleased to be part of and we are delighted that implementation has begun.”

KKP delivered 318 local football facility plans, a process that involved contact with all the local authorities involved and more than 2,000 grassroots football clubs, along with a whole range of stakeholders and interested parties. More than 5,000 individual projects have been identified, including the improvement of grass pitches, installation of new football turf pitches, redeveloping club houses and building new small-sided football facilities.

Andrew Fawkes, KKP’s project manager for this assignment, commented: “KKP’s approach to preparing each plan was based on developing trusted relationships with the football partners, the crucial element of  club consultation, and the compilation of comprehensive reliable data. Assessing the outcome potential, quality and opportunity offered by each project was reliant on our consultants co-ordinating a wealth of site-specific knowledge. In addition numerous face-to-face and telephone interviews ensured the full engagement of all stakeholders, while KKP’s geographic information systems (GIS) team mapped demographic and participation data to underpin the process.”

Robert Sullivan, interim chief executive of the Football Foundation, commented: “After two years of hard work, every local authority has an agreed list of specific pitches and clubhouses to build or improve in their area. These local football facility plans are the road map to a transformation in how every player enjoys our national game. Our next challenge is to work together – as a team at the local and national level – to secure the necessary funding and deliver these projects.”

For further details and interviews please contact KKP via (0)161 764 7040 or email mail@kkp.co.uk

 Notes for editors

• Further detail of KKP’s work on playing pitch strategies and in all aspects of the fields of sport, leisure and planning is available via the KKP website at www.kkp.co.uk
• Full details of the Football Foundation’s Local Football Facility Plan project is available at the Football Foundation’s website: https://footballfoundation.org.uk/local-plans
• The Sport England document Playing Pitch Strategy Guidance: An Approach to Developing and Delivering a Playing Pitch Strategy, which was written by KKP on behalf of Sport England, is available via the Sport England website at: www.sportengland.org/facilities-and-planning
• KKP was founded in 1990 and is the longest-established sport and leisure consultancy currently operating in the UK.

There may be light at the end of Covid-10 crisis tunnel but sport and leisure may need to grasp the opportunity to adopt new approaches to perennial problems. Clare MacLeod, principal consultant at KKP, suggests that Badminton England’s facility strategy might be a step in the right direction

 

News of encouraging results in several of the coronavirus vaccine trials has re-ignited hope. With so much damage done to individuals, communities and businesses, could there be a chance to insert an LED bulb into the light at the end of the tunnel for the sport and leisure sector?

Not wishing to get carried away, the answer might be a cautious ‘maybe’, perhaps even a hesitant ‘yes’, but lessons have to be learned and opportunities grasped if we are to emerge from 2020 with a functioning sector able to survive and build upon the lessons learnt through multiple lockdowns.

One issue we face at present is the trauma of facility-based sports. Badminton, gymnastics, netball and basketball, to name perhaps the most visible, are struggling to find much to celebrate at the moment. Clubs are seeing income from memberships drop, the relevant national governing bodies (NGB) are taking a hit on affiliation fees and, perhaps potentially most damaging, players are being forced to find different things to do with their leisure time. It doesn’t take long for people’s lifestyles and habits to change; many clubs are concerned that, after prolonged lay-offs from their sport, people will have embarked on alternative activities. While facility-based sports ponder the huge opportunity costs of lost play, promotion and development activity, large chunks of the rest of the sport and leisure sector are heavily at risk from the impact of lockdown on physical activity of all kinds.

One of the earliest and most obvious lockdown problems for sports that hire rather than own facilities was access to indoor space. This has been exacerbated by a very high proportion of public leisure centre sports halls being given over (in part or in full) to other activities, predominantly those related to health and fitness, which ‘pays the bills’ in so many facilities.

Badminton has been working on this issue of access to courts (of the right quality and at the right times) for years but the NGB’s current facility strategy, drawn up just prior to the Covid crisis, sees access to school facilities as a potential solution. Community use of school facilities is far from new as a concept but in a post-lockdown environment it looks like an even better option for sustainable access to court space.

However, this requires a new approach if it is going to solve the problem – or part of it at least – in any effective way. The model currently being explored by Badminton England is for the NGB to support local clubs, leagues and/or coaches to gear up and function as operators of the community use of school facilities. This means them taking on the management function for out-of-hours letting to guarantee court access for badminton players, offer additional space to other users and provide a financial return to schools with minimal school staff involvement in the administration process.

As Nick Rimmer, head of development at Badminton England, explained, such an approach offers a real opportunity to make community-use facilities genuinely accessible.

“We don’t have many badminton-specific facilities and our clubs do not normally own their own venues” Nick said. “There are a few exceptions, probably 20 at most across the country, but we tend to find that better development and progression comes from these clubs. As an NGB, we recognise that having that control over facility access and, vitally, programming leads to better development work, from engagement to performance.

“Even before Covid we were seeing sports hall closures and those that were open becoming smaller in terms of court space and more expensive as the demand for other activities grows. It creates a real challenge for clubs that wish to grow and develop.”

Seeking to turn this around, Badminton England started looking at what it could do help clubs and coaches to run their own facilities. Schools are the obvious starting point for this. Research recently published by the Sport and Recreation Alliance shows that 45% of all sports facilities in England are located on ‘education sites’ yet 46% of these were not available to the community for use pre-Covid-19. This means that almost one quarter of all sports hall space is inaccessible to the public.

But how to make it work better than it has in the past so as to create a practical and sustainable route to facilities for badminton?

“It’s been done on a small scale before,” Nick said, “but we’re generally at the whim of sports hall operators. The challenge is to be a little more imaginative in our thinking and look at whether it can be done on a larger scale. Could a club take over a sports hall for several nights per week and build a programme of community use? It’s something we’re exploring while looking to work with these same clubs to put them on a firmer footing.”

The numbers suggest it is an option with huge potential. There are around 4,000 secondary schools in the country and most have a three- or four-court sports hall. That is all most clubs need if they can obtain the requisite programme time. Badminton England’s figures illustrate that around 500,000 people play the sport every two weeks, 50,000 of whom are NGB members. This suggests considerable demand for facility operators (in this case clubs on behalf of schools) to tap into. With so much play being recreational rather than club-based and so many players struggling to find court time, there would seem to be an opportunity for clubs to offer self-managed pay-and-play options within their allocated court time if the booking and management aspect of the letting process can be made to work for all parties. Badminton England is looking to develop core models that are straightforward and replicable for clubs and schools across the country.

Nick acknowledges that this is a big commitment for a club but the badminton-specific centres operating at the moment demonstrate what an impact dedicated facilities can have.

“We’re not looking to take over the world,” Nick said, “but if we can get a few examples working well we can then look to see what will work. We’re looking at a variety of models for badminton but there is no reason why netball and others could not replicate that model with a little help and support.”

The prospect of an NGB being closely involved with facility management also offers an opportunity for the use of schemes such as Clubmark to shape development and behaviours. Offering priority to clubs and leagues that can demonstrate that they are inclusive and safe, with all the positive habits that Clubmark encourages, would be a step in the right direction. A sport with clubs able to demonstrate that that they can deliver the ‘full circle’ of safe, high-quality sporting experiences has a head start in developing the sport and generating membership revenue.

From an education perspective, sports like badminton and netball have a relatively low physical impact on facilities, and the involvement of the NGB providing oversight and quality assurance in the letting process should ensure that schools get a good (and secure) financial return. They can, thus, be confident that clubs managing and using their facilities are appropriately affiliated and that their sports spaces are making a real contribution to the development of sporting opportunity for their students and the local community.

Such a vision undoubtedly involves a level of sophistication beyond that demonstrated to date in respect of community access to schools but that does not mean it could not happen now. Schools have appropriate facilities, court-based sports can bring a long-term, consistent and continuous demand for space, and the impact of the Covid crisis on leisure centre facilities means that operator access to school sites makes more sense than ever.

My own suggestion would be for a sports county governing body, or even perhaps an innovative active partnership, to establish a relationship with two or three schools, becoming the operator for its sports halls and providing coaching and financial benefit to the school (or academy network) in return for access.

At the moment it looks as if the damage done to the sport and leisure sector by the Covid crisis will be with us for a very long time but Badminton England is at least attempting to grasp the opportunity presented by the need for a new approach to existing problems. Let’s see if it can make it work.

Clare MacLeod is a Director and Principal Consultant at KKP

Contact Clare on clare.macleod@kkp.co.uk 

 

November 2020

John Eady of KKP considers some options that might be considered based upon the calendar of challenges that 2020 has brought. With professional sport in crisis, what does the future hold for grass roots sport and is it time to look again at the role of community clubs?

 

Sporting headlines tend towards the cataclysmic at the best of times but recently the usual references to crisis, chaos and disaster have been less easy to dismiss. Many clubs, leagues and entire sports are staring over the financial precipice and facing unprecedented circumstances.

There is no doubting the scale of the challenge. The English Football League (EFL) is talking about further losses of £200m without a return of supporters through the gates. Premiership Rugby and rugby’s second tier, the RFU Championship, are questioning whether they can survive much longer in their current form. Hopes for a support package for sport from the DCMS seem to be edging further into the long grass the lengthier discussions become.

But most of the ‘sport in crisis’ headlines, and a proportion of the pleas for central government support, are about the plight of professional sport. For all the economic impact assessments of the professional sports sector, it is hard to justify government bail-outs for leagues that have rewarded themselves handsomely for their multi-billion-pound broadcasting contracts or clubs that commit to spend 120% of their turnover on player wages. In the context of large-scale support for professional sport, we are surely obliged to ask what we are actually getting for our money. If the professional leagues collapsed, we might wonder, what difference would it make to the grassroots?

There are no easy answers. A great many professional clubs do have strong bonds with their communities. The loss of long-established clubs such as Bury FC and Macclesfield Town has had an impact, not least on local supply chains and retailers. KKP’s work on the EFL’s report Measuring the Impact of EFL Clubs in the Community, published in January 2020, demonstrated the scale of these connections, particularly through their club community organisations (CCO); 41 million person-hours of participation in sport and physical activity is not to be dismissed lightly. But CCOs are, technically at least, independent. Could they continue without the support of and relationship with the clubs they work with so closely? It would seem unlikely.

While football gets the lion’s share of attention and investment, professional rugby has been building a comparable financial model. For all its successes, professional rugby has been on the cusp of a financial crisis for as long as it has existed. Being brutally honest, I can’t get too exercised about the Championship losing its RFU funding. Taking rugby’s second tier out of the (RFU underpinned) professional player-based equation and allocating the funds released to other areas of the game was being considered when I first evaluated the financial implications of Rugby’s World Class Programme two decades ago.

At community level, rugby union’s club-focused structure has been one of the game’s strengths for generations but the willingness to accept the trickle-down of professionalism has put it under strain. The Covid-19 crisis may have at least one beneficial effect in that it may compel all clubs below the Premiership to address the fundamental issue of how and where money is spent. Over the last 15 years KKP has worked with dozens of rugby clubs that have invested heavily to recruit and pay players that can move them up a couple of divisions. The notion of putting the existence of your club at risk in order to secure its place at a slightly higher level of recreational rugby has always seemed to be a pointless exercise, now more than ever.

This has evolved to a degree where player recruitment has, for many clubs, become more important than player development. It has led to the ‘products’ of their own investment of time, effort and other resources in mini and junior structures hitting a first XV glass ceiling whereby the opportunity afforded to home-grown players is limited. It has also, in many clubs, shifted the focus of their executive committees and key volunteers onto an annual drive to raise funds which are simply channelled into the pockets of nomadic players who will, for an extra £10 per game, be playing elsewhere the following season. A number of clubs have invested in paying players at levels that have led to them incurring significant debt, to the point where selling off parts of their grounds for housing and other development has been the only way to stave off terminal financial crises.

We may find that the Covid crisis goes some way to clarifying or redefining the relationship between the professional elite and the grassroots of sport. For all the excellent work of EFL club community organisations, the world of professional football is ruthlessly competitive. Rugby’s steps along that road have already prompted some to wonder whether the loss of the connection between a club and cohorts of local players coming from juniors through to the first team is a price worth paying.

With financial challenges arriving with ever greater frequency, we may start to place a higher value on the role of the community-focused club, the kind of set-up that runs dozens of teams, from minis and juniors aged six or less to under-19s, women’s teams, and three or four men’s teams, all with coaches, assistants and helpers. Clubs with their own facilities, a strong and broad membership base, and deep roots in their locality have a much better chance of surviving current (and future) challenges, whatever their sport might be. In such circumstances, which level of league each of your (many) teams is playing in and whether your first team is one league above or two below your local rivals may not prove to be quite as important. With a bit of luck it will revert to being a matter for discussion in the bar and of local bragging rights rather than a huge commitment of club finances.

Just as empty stadia are requiring the elite end of the sporting spectrum to reassess its relationship with its paying spectators, the prospect of even less money (and, in the case of rugby and many other sports, less NGB staff-led professional support) finding its way from the elite to the grass roots may prompt re-evaluation of all the relationships in the game. Professional sport set up to maximise the commercial returns for owners, administrators and players is fine, but that is business based on sport. Government initiatives, NGB energies and available financial support should be primarily focused on clubs that are set up to enrich their communities rather than remote investors.

There are, as always, no easy answers and the question of what sport is for will prompt a different response from everyone asked. However, the reaction to the question of what kind of sport we should be actively seeking to encourage may prove to be clearer.

 

John Eady is chief executive of KKP.

 

Measuring the Impact of EFL Clubs in the Community

KKP produced the report Measuring the Impact of EFL Clubs in the Community on behalf of the EFL. The report, published in January 2020, demonstrated the scale of the connections between professional clubs and their local communities, particularly through the work their club community organisations.

Download the full report via the EFL website via the link above [pdf].

 

 November 2020

Tim Holdsworth considers the impact of a calendar devoid of major participation events and wonders whether the scale of the loss will highlight the contribution they make to the UK’s cultural and sporting life.

 

In 2020 the London Marathon took take place in October for the first time. The fortieth staging of the event served as a reminder of the extraordinary challenges set by the Covid crisis and the exceptional capacity for innovation demonstrated by those determined to make the best of tough times. The 2020 event was an elite-only race run on a park circuit in the centre of the capital but all around the world thousands of other runners took part in a virtual marathon, earning their medals remotely and ensuring that the spirit of the event is maintained.

The London Marathon is one of the biggest events of the UK sporting calendar. Every spring for the last four decades it has brought huge numbers of people onto the streets, all with a wide variety of roles and motivations.

There are the participants, of course, each with their own reasons for taking on the challenge of a marathon. Each has their own network of supporters, family and friends, helping them on the day or making their training possible over the preceding months. Also in attendance are the many thousands of spectators there simply to be part of an uplifting event and cheer the runners on. Next, there are the thousands of volunteers working at the water stations, the start village and the finish line, making sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible and representatives of the charities for whom the Marathon is one of the biggest annual fund-raising opportunities. On top of these we have the staff who work for the organising company, the local authorities, the media and other agencies who are on hand or behind the scenes to make the event possible and safe.

Add to all these the millions of us watching the whole affair on television from the safety of our sofas and you begin to get some idea of the scale of the event and its reach beyond the streets on the day.

And it is not just the London Marathon. From the Great North Run and the Manchester Marathon through to local half-marathons and 10K runs, a whole range of events all over the country provide a focal point for participation and motivation for those who wish to write their own sporting story.

It is easy to underestimate the impact of all these on participation and physical activity, particularly when a whole calendar of events has disappeared. How many people have been inspired to get active by seeing the London Marathon on TV, reading about one in their own area or seeing a local event in person on the streets of their own towns and cities? How many people are missing the camaraderie and inspiration of their local Park Run or club meeting…or looking ruefully at the darkening evenings and thinking that they should have been planning their training schedule for next spring’s event?

The cancellation of all these events has a profound impact beyond those intending to take part. A great many local charities rely on them as fund-raising opportunities and the loss of the related contributions will put a big hole in their revenue streams. Clubs often use events to raise their own funds, whether by supplying support staff for larger major mass participation or making them a focal point for their own club activity. Plus, even beyond this, we should not forget all the local suppliers – the sign-makers, the marquee companies, the stewarding companies – who will not be generating business from event organisers.

If we are trying to salvage something encouraging from our current, rather bleak circumstances, we might hope that this loss (albeit, we hope temporary) of events will strengthen our understanding and appreciation of the impacts, networks and motivations that they create, whatever their scale or what the headline activity may be.

In addition, while we can apply long-established formulae and models for calculating and demonstrating the economic impact of events, it is easy to overlook the value of the unexpected connections and unintended consequences they provide. Each person who puts on their trainers and steps out of their front door for the first time has their own unique mix of hopes and motivations but you can bet that an image of, or a story from, an event is in there somewhere.

The Covid crisis has clearly had a huge impact on the commercial event operators (we’ll look at this in more depth in another blog post soon) but many companies report that the majority of participants are carrying over their entries to next year. We can only hope that this will be a case of motivation and inspiration postponed rather than vanished, and that having seen what we’ve lost we will appreciate its return that much more.

 

Tim Holdsworth is a senior consultant at KKP.

Contact Tim at tim.holdsworth@kkp.co.uk

 

October 2020

 

There is no doubt that the post-lockdown environment will be a challenging landscape for much of the sport and leisure sector but is sport suffering from being largely overlooked in the rush for re-emergence? With so many difficult questions on the table, has the sector got any answers?

 

With schools reopening, traffic building and people (albeit gradually) returning to work in greater numbers, it feels as if the UK is starting to emerge into a post-lockdown landscape. The Covid-19 emergency has been (and still is) a steep learning curve for everyone, not least those in the sport and leisure sector who have had to face hitherto unimagined challenges and deal with new realities.

In the short term at least these include an acceptance that not all leisure centres are going to reopen and that sports spaces (in particular sports halls) have been annexed to enable the development and (hopefully short-term) presentation of a feasible fitness offer. In addition to this, school sports facilities may be unavailable for an extended period. At the same time the Government’s newly published strategy for countering a national obesity crisis barely mentions physical activity; and leisure operators (of all hues) need their direct debit customers to return to the gym as quickly as possible.

The Covid crisis also created a perfect storm for social objectives, or rather for missing them. It can reasonably be argued that the Government’s post-lockdown focus for sport and leisure has been health and fitness and helping the commercial sector stay viable rather than creating opportunities for ordinary people to rediscover and build on experiences of exercise and activity. If we are being completely honest about the sector, this argument was not a difficult one to make even prior to the lockdown in March.

Keeping operators on their toes is no doubt important but the emphasis on commercial viability has meant that sport has been squeezed out. Sports halls full of gym equipment and exercise stations, for example, have taken up the space used by badminton, netball and basketball, leaving players with restricted access at best and often no court option at all. What impact will this have on participation?

Sport is already feeling the pinch as national governing bodies contemplate trying to make ends meet after having income streams cut to a trickle. Many were, in response to Sport England’s (pre-Covid) demands, working hard to improve the proportion of their income derived from individual and club memberships; the lockdown has had a brutal impact on the strides that some were making in this regard. Development programmes and the staff that deliver them have, almost inevitably, borne the brunt.

Discussions with regard to emergency funding from central government for local authority sports facilities have illustrated the point. While arts advocates have secured input of £1.25 billion, sport is still trying to negotiate a lesser package to support the future of provision and facilities across the local authority sector. There seems to be an ongoing and implicit assumption at all levels of governance that the arts deserves its subsidy but that sport should be expected to survive with substantially less (or no subsidy at all) in a commercial environment.

Apparently sport is able to trade its way out of difficulty while the arts (which if we are being honest, also has a very well-developed commercial capacity) needs to be supported as part of the nation’s cultural wellbeing.

 

To be an advocate for sport is all too often to be treated as an annexe to public health – another area in which Government changes are creating substantial uncertainty.

 

While the arts is articulately lauded (often from within) for its contribution to the health and wealth of the nation, sport (and associated physical activity) often has its role in creating and building lives, communities and economies taken for granted. To be an advocate for sport is all too often to be treated as an annexe to public health – another area in which Government changes are creating substantial uncertainty.

Some of the new realities have been harsh. A key lesson of the recalibration of public services during the coronavirus emergency and post-lockdown re-emergence is that there is little interest in the low-profit user. Re-engaging with and bringing back the monthly direct debit customer is being seen (justifiably from a commercial perspective) as the route to salvation of the leisure sector. While entirely understandable, this would be slightly more palatable if (pre- or post-Covid 19) there was a concurrent drive to install a decent ‘leisure card’ offer to give the low-waged and disadvantaged a realistic option to take part.

The current focus is on return on investment to enable operators to survive the commercial shock of Covid-19 and to help local authorities mitigate their losses. Recognition of, and the implications for, the social return on investment have largely been missing.

But this should come as no surprise; it is where we have been for the last 15 years at least. The original rationale for swimming pools (‘public baths’) was to enable people living in poverty to have a wash. Our parks and open spaces were laid out to allow those living and working in cramped, congested conditions to get some fresh air and a little exercise during their rare moments of leisure. Despite this history, more recent attitudes to public services and public health have seen the concept of social investment relegated to lip service, platitudes hidden away in the footnotes of commercial contracts.

Emergence from lockdown is a critical moment for sport. Facility-dependent sports are under huge pressure. Badminton, netball and basketball need access to sports halls and courts to continue. With any form of social distancing required, gymnastics will struggle to get sufficient numbers into its dedicated facilities to make them viable. England Athletics has nine sets of guidance on its website.

Rugby and cricket may suffer slightly less trauma given that there is some money within the sport and many clubs own their own facilities. That said, the swingeing cuts to the field development workforce in rugby betray a limited corporate appreciation of just how significant the interaction between in situ development staff and people at various levels in clubs (not just those sat on executive committees) is in respect of the stimulation and maintenance of not only junior and women’s rugby but also the adult 15-a-side game. Swimming too, is in many environments, only on the radar for its role in generating potential pools revenue via swimming lessons.

 

The coronavirus emergency has put the spotlight on the leisure sector and many operators and local authorities have found themselves exposed, not only financially but also in terms of their priorities and motivations.

 

The coronavirus emergency has put the spotlight on the leisure sector and many operators and local authorities have found themselves exposed, not only financially but also in terms of their priorities and motivations. Perhaps the biggest exposure has been the limited extent of the management information upon which relationships between councils and contractors are based.

Extensive and detailed financial and commercial data is available but, when it comes to social return on investment or data relating to areas of deprivation, access from people accommodated by housing associations or post-operative interventions, information is almost always sparse. Is this because it is unavailable or difficult to produce; or simply because there is insufficient interest in the answers? While prominent in national strategy statements, is there sufficient local focus on driving opportunity for such groups – groups for whom sports and leisure provision might be of primary importance. How else can we hold contractors to account on their behalf? It’s a good question.

Covid-19 has prompted plenty of questions and the emergence of the sport and leisure sector into a post-lockdown environment will pose many more. In the near future the sector needs to be prepared to come up with some answers. By April 2021 will we have considered responses to questions such as these:

• Are we (and when) going to start better serving the key groups for which sport and physical activity is an essential component in improving physical and mental health and wellbeing?
• Are we going to commit to accommodating sport in its purest form and indoor sport in particular?
• Is the short-term cannibalisation of sports halls on the altar of group fitness likely to follow the trajectory of squash courts? Will Covid-19 accelerate the processes already in train to ‘convert’ sports halls into further fitness rooms, studios, ten-pin bowling centres, soft play spaces and clip ’n’ climb venues?
• If the sport user is to be evicted from the leisure centre is the schools sector sufficiently keen, able and responsive to provide the sport-specific venues that are already in high demand?
• Should we set a national target to get local authority sport and leisure venues to a position where they all levy realistic cost-recovery charges for access to facilities with real properly subsidised rates for (agreed) priority groups?

Answers on a postcard please; to be posted en route to your local leisure centre… but make it quick.

 

John Eady

 

September 2020

During lockdown KKP has been working with local authorities across England to help them and their operators prepare for the reopening of facilities and the remobilisation of sport and leisure services. David McHendry considers some of the operational and financial challenges of a new leisure environment.

 

 

The announcement that leisure facilities will be able to reopen in July marks a significant point in the sport and leisure sector’s reawakening from the Covid-19 lockdown. It is another small indication that life for many people is slowly beginning to return to normal, even if it is going to be a new normal.

Through lockdown KKP has been working with a significant number of local authorities (25-plus at the last count) to prepare for reopening and the working environment beyond. Exploring the process of remobilisation has revealed some real challenges for the sector, not least the implications for the contractual arrangements between councils and operators, but it has highlighted plenty of opportunities too. While a return to where we were in February 2020 seems likely to be some way off, a new normal is possible and, depending on the decisions we make and the support that is available, new systems and modes of operation would appear likely to emerge to build on the lessons of lockdown.

Whatever the long-term future might hold, the immediate challenges for local authorities are going to be operational. Social distancing and bio-hygiene will be part of everyone’s everyday experience for the foreseeable future and this has significant ongoing implications for leisure providers. All buildings will have to be risk assessed. Equipment will have to be cleaned and appropriately spaced, particularly in gyms. Entry and exit routes to all parts of any building will have to be assessed and redesigned. Circulation areas within buildings, including reception and corridors, will need to be carefully managed.

Operators will be looking to protect – and councils will be expecting operators to protect – their main income sources: health and fitness, and swimming lessons. Activity space will be at a premium and will have to be allocated and reallocated in line with demand and the financial realities of income generation. However well planned and managed these spaces are, reduced capacity is likely to have a significant impact on income and each facility’s ability to serve its membership.

Ultimately in the short to medium term facilities will cost more to run and generate less income. This in turn will have significant implications for the viability of the operating contracts under which they are managed. While the Government’s job retention scheme has provided some help over the period of lockdown, the requirements of social distancing will mean that an income will be well below pre-February 2020 contract operating levels. With public procurement notices from Government suggesting that these contracts be temporarily set aside owing to the exceptional circumstances, new arrangements have to be agreed. Solutions will need to be collaborative, amicable and mutually acceptable. With no two buildings the same and each requiring its own Covid risk assessment, local authorities and operators will need to explore and agree the financial implications of opening each individual venue.

KKP’s experience of working with councils and operators over the past few months suggests that, in the most part, these agreements are being approached in a positive and collaborative way. However, moving from lockdown to remobilisation will be an even more challenging – and costly – process and the move from remobilisation to new operational conventions will be accompanied by its own challenges.

Looming over all the remobilisation discussions is the very real threat of rationalisation of services and facilities. The combination of the parlous state of local authority funding, the demands of responding to Covid operating procedures and the (thus far) absence of central government support for the sector means that the closure of facilities and the loss of services remains a real possibility.

Charting a course towards the new normal will be about meeting the expectations of everyone who wishes to get back to their old sport and exercise routines, along with everything that is part of that experience: the activity, the environments, the communities and friendships. The New World will, for a while at least, have to encase this with bookings, restricted (planned) access and more regimented usage timetables. The next period of time will be about being adaptable and creative with each change to the regulations and each step along the path that leads to being able to operate and use facilities in the manner to which we had, prior to March this year, become accustomed.

But the old normal, if it comes, will need to be different. It cannot simply be about a return to health and fitness, and swimming lessons driving financial returns. The sport and leisure sector needs to be driving social objectives. The Covid crisis has exposed so many shortcomings in our society, not least those involving health, physical activity and access to opportunities for both. These are the real objectives. The challenge for the sector is to look beyond the buildings to make sure that our facilities and our operators are meeting the needs of everyone in our communities, not just those who choose, or are able, to pay to come through the door.

The sport and leisure sector will need a new relationship with the concept and structures of public health. It will need to embrace, explore and exploit its online offer and the opportunities of remote access. Building on the lessons of lockdown, the sector needs to extend its offer into areas such as housing associations, care homes, schools, temples and mosques to develop connections with, and opportunities for, client groups that might otherwise have little interest in what our facilities might have to offer.

The Covid emergency of 2020 has been – and remains – a frightening and sobering period for our communities and nations but those in the sport and leisure sector are optimistic by nature. Some constructive aspects of the lockdown experience may be emerging. A national emphasis on the very clear connection between physical activity and health was arguably one of lockdown’s earliest achievements. The profile of walking and cycling has grown. Huge numbers of people have discovered or rediscovered a connection to their locality and realised the importance of their own open spaces; not every walk or ride needs to begin with a car journey. Among the greatest benefits has been the support, assistance and friendship found within and among communities, with so many people responding to adversity with an offer of help to their neighbours, local groups and charities.

Significant opportunities have emerged but there are still so many significant challenges to be overcome. It’s a big ask, so let’s have a Big Ask. As a sector, we should not allow the struggle to return to normality to obscure the responsibility we have to think about the longer term. Our challenge is not just to cope with the new normal and hope for a return to the former status quo. We need to be building on the opportunities that have emerged from the challenges of the last few months to create a vision of a better way of working and a better way of serving and supporting our communities. A new old normal should be our goal.

 

David McHendry is managing director at KKP.
Contact David at david.mchendry@kkp.co.uk

July 2020

NEWS RELEASE

ISSUE DATE: 16 July 2020

Sport and leisure sector responding to challenges of post-lockdown remobilisation
Contract agreements central to reopening process, according to KKP

 

The sport and leisure sector is well placed to respond to the challenges of opening local leisure facilities after the Government announced that facilities will be able to reopen later this month, according to KKP, one of the UK’s leading leisure consultancies.

However, KKP chief executive John Eady has warned that negotiating contract agreements between local councils and facility operators for the new trading environment will be central to a successful reopening. KKP has been working with 25 local authorities during lockdown to broker agreements with the operators who are contracted to manage their sport and leisure facilities.

“The government’s announcement that leisure facilities will be able to reopen this month is very welcome news,” Eady said. “The restrictions on access and activities required to keep staff and visitors safe are necessary and sensible but will affect the balance between running costs and income upon which agreements between local councils and facility operators are based.

“In recent months KKP has been working with local authorities on the governance of remobilisation; exploring how operators can reopen and manage local facilities safely, and what the financial implications of opening with restricted usage will be. Discussions between councils and operators have generally been constructive with a clear focus on collaboration and mutually acceptable outcomes that will serve the best interests of facility users and local communities in the long term.”

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced on 9 July that outdoor pools can reopen to the public from 11 July followed by indoor gyms, pools and leisure centres on 25 July.

  

Notes for editors

• John Eady is available for interview. Please contact KKP via (0)161 764 7040 or by email at mail@kkp.co.uk
• KKP is a leading UK-based national and international practice operating from offices in Manchester. Founded in 1990, KKP is now a major multi-disciplinary consultancy offering specialist advice and impartial, objective and creative consultancy support to a wide portfolio of clients.
• The DCMS announcement regarding the reopening of leisure facilities can be found online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-announces-gyms-and-pools-to-reopen-safely

First and foremost, we hope that our clients, colleagues, families and friends are all well and physically unaffected by this virus.

Taking into account the latest Government advice with regard to the coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak, this is just a brief note to reassure our clients about the fact that KKP’s services remain fully operational.

We are continuing to service existing projects as normal and are committed to meeting pre-agreed deadlines.

We have implemented changes to current working practices and will, for at least the next few weeks, operate with a mix of staff working from home while others work from the office. All colleagues have full access to project files and will continue to deliver projects as required. We can all be contacted in the normal way.

In line with Government guidelines our working practices are under constant review. At present, in situations where it is not possible or is inadvisable to attend meetings in person we are facilitating conference calls, virtual meetings and presentations to suit and encouraging a ‘business as normal’ approach to ensure that project impetus is not lost and that clients’ needs are met throughout this period.

However long the restrictions associated with Covid-19 are in place, it is our intention to be here to assist you to develop plans, get processes moving and maintain current project impetus. If you have any queries about current assignments, or if you have a project or short-term requirement that might need our support, please get in touch.

If you have any queries about any of the above, please feel free to contact me.

 

Dave McHendry, managing director, KKP

Contact Dave on david.mchendry@kkp.co.uk

ISSUE DATE: 10 March 2020

 

EFL Day of Action highlights research findings and celebrates impact of football on local communities

KKP analysis demonstrates scale and value of club/CCO impact

 

The EFL will be celebrating the positive impact of professional football clubs on their local communities today (Tuesday 10 March) following the publication of research carried out by KKP on behalf of the EFL Trust.

Football clubs across the Sky Bet Championship, League One and League Two will be taking part in the EFL Day of Action showcasing the programmes and activities that EFL clubs and their club community organisations (CCOs) deliver to help with a wide range of social issues, including diversity and inclusion, education, and health and wellbeing.

The report, produced by KKP and titled Measuring the Impact of EFL Clubs in the Community, shows that over a 12-month period EFL clubs/CCOs delivered some 562,000 hours of group activity, involved more than 886,000 people, and spent over £62.8 million on social and community projects. The study comprises the first comprehensive overview of club-based involvement in, and impact on, local communities and, viewed collectively, the whole of England.

Findings were based on a three-stage methodology devised by KKP in conjunction with the EFL and EFL Trust to apply common measures to the national network of clubs/CCOs, creating a clear national picture underpinned by robust data. The methodology comprised initial analysis of work carried out by clubs/CCOs, followed by a detailed pilot study of eight EFL clubs and, finally, the roll out of comprehensive survey to all EFL clubs nationally.

Rick Parry, EFL chair, introduced and acknowledged the importance of the report, commenting: “Our clubs have always had a unique position at the heart of their respective towns and cities, so it is important that we celebrate some of the fantastic work being carried out on a daily basis, and also understand the effect that clubs have on their individual and collective communities. Commissioned by the EFL to survey all EFL clubs and club community organisations, KKP has provided a unique study which allows us to demonstrate what clubs do on a national scale.”

KKP chief executive John Eady commented: “KKP’s extensive experience in the field of impact evaluation and specialist performance measurement expertise enabled us to devise a research method that generated the data and developed the analysis to demonstrate the huge community impact – and potential – of EFL clubs/CCOs.”

John Eady continued: “Over the course of the research more than one million data cells were produced and analysed. This was a huge task for Peter Millward and the KKP data team, which also applied a whole raft of geographic, socio-economic and household data to deliver results that were credible, insightful and replicable. The 93% response rate for the survey makes for robust, comprehensive data and is a testament to the effort and commitment of the KKP team to the project.”

In addition to a national report and dataset, KKP produced specific reports for each club and CCO. Each includes a catchment area profile (age structure, total population, projected population, deprivation measures and maps, ethnic composition, income, benefits dependency, crime rates, health indicators and activity rates) and findings related to participation, engagement, purpose, environment and funding.

The national picture that has emerged confirms the scale, human resources and time deployed in programmes that are covering: sport and physical activity; health and wellbeing; education and employability programmes; and community engagement.

Within the Measuring the Impact of EFL Clubs in the Community report, the EFL notes: “Looking ahead, a comprehensive baseline now exists that is not only informative in its own right but enables a more insightful strategic approach nationally and at individual clubs/CCOs.”

Notes for editors

• Measuring the Impact of EFL Clubs in the Community Insight and Impact Report 2020 is available via the EFL website:
  https://www.efl.com/contentassets/b59b1b881a504ef587dae1497a35c98f/efl_insight_impact_report-lr—final-pdf.pdf
• Details of the EFL Day of Action are available via the EFL website:
  https://www.efl.com/news/2020/march/efl-day-of-action-to-celebrate-impact-of-clubs-in-their-communities/
• Further details of KKP’s work in all aspects of the fields of sport, leisure and planning are available via the KKP website at www.kkp.co.uk
• John Eady is available for interview. Please contact KKP via (0)161 764 7040 or email mail@kkp.co.uk
• KKP’s post-project completion survey undertaken with all clients between 2014-2019 showed that more than 97% of clients would recommend KKP to others and more than 93% were prepared to be referees.

 

 

David McHendry explains how Dundee’s new regional performance centre can trace its roots back to an ambitious bid for a national project and why investment in good research rarely fails to pay off.

 

The opening of the new Caird Park regional performance centre in January 2020 brought a first-class facility to Dundee but, from a facility development perspective, it also served to illustrate the value of ambition and a long-term approach to sports provision.

Caird Park represents a significant investment by sportscotland and Dundee City Council. The £32-million scheme is now home to a full-size artificial indoor pitch, an outdoor 3G pitch that meets Fifa and World Rugby international standards, an eight-court sports hall, a sports science suite, health club and meeting spaces. These sit alongside an indoor athletics centre, an outdoor athletics track and floodlit outdoor velodrome. As well as providing a venue for Dundee United’s academy, Caird Park also serves as a community sports hub that is home to eight community sports clubs.

Caird Park was not a KKP project but the development of a major sports venue in Dundee has its roots in a different project that we had worked on some years previously.

In 2012 sportscotland and the Scottish Football Association invited bids from partner cities to host the Scottish National Performance Centre. KKP led Dundee City Council’s team and put together a strong bid based on the development of an unused part of Camperdown Country Park; this would have hosted the performance centre and hotel. Reaching the final bid stage of the process represented a significant achievement and also generated a great deal of positive feedback, not only from sportscotland and the SFA but also from the local and regional stakeholder organisations that had been part of the bid preparation.

However, the need for the national football team to be close to a major airport always had Dundee on the back foot. The Oriam at Herriot Watt University now fits the bill for sportscotland and the SFA’s needs.

KKP’s involvement with the project came to an end at the bid stage but the scheme had served to illustrate the potential for high-quality sports facilities in Dundee. Although the bid had been focused on a national performance centre, the process of developing the bid helped to make a case for a regional football development centre when the time came. A change of scale also raised the possibility of a change of location and offered the possibility of co-locating with the existing facilities in Caird Park, creating a large sports hub closer to the centre of the city.

In the context of a bid for a national performance centre, a regional football centre might seem like something of a runners-up prize but, a few years on from that first KKP-led project, the Caird Park scheme represents an excellent outcome for the city. The Caird Park development has generated significant inward investment  brought significant investment in the City offer and created a high quality, accessible, comprehensive home for sport in the region.

Caird Park demonstrates that, the time, energy and expertise invested in making a properly researched and well-prepared bid is seldom wasted. Any opportunity to undertake an in-depth assessment of facilities, demand and potential is an opportunity that should be grasped.

Caird Park also serves as a reminder of the value of ambition. If Dundee was always an unlikely venue for Scotland’s national performance centre, it was a bid that fitted in with the city’s determination to rediscover and reinvigorate itself as a city of opportunity and culture. The city is now the host to the V&A Dundee, the first design museum in Scotland and the first Victoria and Albert Museum site outside London, illustrating what can be achieved with a strong vision and a determined, strategic approach.

In the end the national performance centre did not come to Dundee but it could not see any reason why it shouldn’t. By having the confidence to bid, the city demonstrated its ambition and created an opportunity to reimagine its approach to sports provision.

At KKP our experience tells that asking the right questions is the starting point for a successful project. With Caird Park and the scheme that laid the foundations for its development Dundee demonstrated that, rather than “Why?”, the first question should always be: “Why not?”

 

David McHendry is managing director at KKP.
Contact David at david.mchendry@kkp.co.uk

27 February 2020

KKP’s work on behalf of the FA to deliver a local football facility plan (LFFP) for every local authority is nearing completion. Andrew Fawkes explains how it has been done and what it means for local football.

Grassroots football facilities, their poor condition and impact on the pathway to performance of our national team are perennially emotive issues faced by the FA and frequently raised in the national media. However, the FA is now implementing a 10-year strategy to change the landscape of football facilities in England. This is underpinned by an action plan for investment in every local authority, referred to as a Local Football Facility Plan (LFFP).

KKP is leading delivery of the LFFP programme, working hand in hand with county FAs. This process has run over an intensive two-year period and is scheduled to be completed by mid-2020.

Working in partnership with the UK Government, the Premier League, Sport England and the Football Foundation, the FA is setting out its response to, and estimating the costs of addressing, the needs of grassroots football in light of KKP’s work. Feedback on existing facilities received as part of the LFFP process consistently mirrors that of the national strategy. It is a picture of poor-quality grass pitches, changing pavilions in need of improvement, and insufficient access to floodlit, artificial grass (3G) football turf pitches (FTPs). The cumulative ask in terms of capital investment required is huge but the FA is also playing catch-up in terms of facility numbers; England has only half the number of 3G pitches of its European footballing neighbours.

Having now spoken directly to over 2,000 grassroots football clubs, nearly 300 local authorities plus a range of other stakeholders (not to mention covering thousands of motorway miles), our team has identified an excellent portfolio of pipeline projects. Surrey is one of the areas with high potential; it is also one of the largest and most diverse of the FA’s counties. The Surrey County FA serves an area with a population of over two million people, 4,000 teams and more than 40,000 registered players. It encompasses the 11 boroughs and districts in the Surrey County Council domain plus five London boroughs. It is also an area where the county FA takes a strong lead on facilities development.

Quite a few community clubs in Surrey are, in terms of levels of demand and their management capacity, capable of taking on full-sized FTPs in their own right. As an example, following KKP’s work on Waverley Borough Council’s playing pitch strategy (PPS) and now its LFFP, several projects are either in the pipeline or are now on the point of delivery. Some of these are supported by significant Section 106 funding and all are benefitting from strategic engagement with the Football Foundation.

Of the 330 LFFPs commissioned, 70% are now signed off and being activated by county FAs working with the Football Foundation Engagement Team.  From KKP’s perspective, it is highly encouraging to note that stakeholder feedback on the LFFP development process is very positive; across all plan elements, more than 93% of those who expressed a specific view confirmed the usefulness and accuracy of their plan’s content.

This overwhelmingly positive feedback is a strong endorsement of the methodology KKP has developed over many years of experience in this field. It is also a testament to the hard work the KKP team puts in on the ground, visiting sites and engaging with clubs and communities in situ to develop real insight into facilities and the opportunities they can deliver.

Andrew Fawkes is a Principal Consultant with KKP. Contact him at andrew.fawkes@kkp.co.uk

Details of the LFFP programme are available via the Football Foundation website at https://localplans.footballfoundation.org.uk

(Figures based upon receipt of 318 responses from local authorities, county FAs and other stakeholders). 

 

14 February 2020

KKP’s approach to quality and customer service has served its clients well over the course of 33+ years of business. John Eady explains how and why quality is central to the Company’s modus operandi.

Maya Angelou, the American poet, singer and civil rights activist, said, “People forget what you said. They forget what you did. But they never forget how you made them feel.”

KKP is a busy consultancy practice with a great many projects running at once and it is easy to get caught up in what we do, what we think we have achieved for our clients and the great service provided. However, although we do excellent work, it is essential never to forget that it is the client that matters most.

Great customer service is measured by whether, at the end of the assignments, clients feel that they made the right decision in choosing KKP to deliver their strategy or solve their problem. Even when we disagree with a client’s point of view – and it is fundamentally important that we are able to disagree – it is vital that they know that we are on their side and committed to helping them.

The absolute underpinning of this is quality. Fully rounded, the concept of quality draws upon a wide variety of elements, skills and behaviours: open-mindedness; listening and hearing; knowledge, experience and expert analysis; plus the confidence to reflect and challenge. However, at the top of the list of the essentials would have to be: attitude, communication and commitment to the client’s interest.

KKP first acquired ISO9001 quality certification in 2007 – for project management and delivery – as part of a determination to put quality at the centre of our business. We have been successfully reassessed every year since, up to and including 2023/24. ISO, in effect, drives continual review and improvement across all work areas. It subjects the organisation to regular interrogation and oversight by expert external assessors but ultimately the quality of our operation will be judged by our clients.

On project completion, all clients are asked to evaluate and rate us on the following criteria:

• The final product delivered: how well we met the brief, attention to detail, the quality of work undertaken and the report/strategy/feasibility study/evaluation produced.
• The quality of client communication, support and advice, both during and after the delivery of the contract.
• On-time delivery and the meeting of deadlines, with regard to overall outcomes and interim project milestones.
• The extent to which they consider us to have delivered value for money.

Between 2014 and 31 January 2024 KKP has received completed feedback from 205 clients; two thirds of these were local authorities with the balance from a combination of national governing bodies of sport (NGBs), planning consultancies and developers, universities, leisure trusts and active partnerships. All of this is scored and analysed and we believe the results speak for themselves. Most notably, virtually all (98%) would recommend us to others and more than 93% are prepared to be referees.

In 2023 KKP entered its 34^th continuous year in business so there is a good chance that our clients know who we are, how we work and what they are going to get in terms of our experience, attitude and ethos. After more than three decades of working across a range of professional sectors on a wide variety of projects with a huge number of clients, we have come to the conclusion that the process of choosing and working with a consultancy can be boiled down to the following fundamentals:

• Choose a practice that you know will look to learn with you from any subject or situation.
• Work with people who do not come with fixed ideas about how things are supposed to be and how to handle them.
• Value truth and integrity above all other things; they are the key to high-quality consultancy and without them the support you get will be of limited, if any, value.
• Choose people who will go into battle for you (and if necessary – behind closed doors – with you) to ensure the right outcome.

When you are choosing a consultancy keep these fundamentals in mind. Investing in quality is always worth the cost.

Updated 15 February 2024

Volunteering underpins a huge proportion of community life but how can we make the volunteering experience better for volunteers and the organisations who rely on their help? John Eady offers some thoughts.

Across the UK volunteering is recognised as the keystone of community life. The huge amount of time and activity delivered by volunteers is, quite rightly, celebrated as an essential contribution to the work of the many organisations that depend on them. The support, devotion and assistance of this unpaid workforce is of enormous value to the recipient organisations and has a profound impact on lives, environments and opportunities within communities all over the country. Of no less importance are the significant health, wellbeing and personal development benefits that good volunteering can have for the individuals who give their time.

Note the use of the word ‘good’ here: good volunteering is the key. Given that so much of the nation’s sporting and cultural life is dependent upon volunteering, it is vitally important that we get it right. Making volunteering a positive experience, both for the volunteers that contribute and the organisations that rely upon them, is crucial but it is not easy and it is not always done well. Working with volunteers and managing the volunteer experience needs to be much better if our volunteering culture is to thrive.

Influence

Transforming the volunteering experience to maximise the effectiveness of the contributions being made does not necessarily require seismic shifts in the volume or type of work being undertaken. However, volunteers do need support. If this support is to be effective there needs to be a clear understanding of who our volunteers are, what they do, why they do it and what value their volunteering delivers, both for themselves and to the organisations with which they work.

Lead agencies and organisations need to be committed to volunteer development but they also need to be clear from the outset about the ways in which the programmes, venues and networks supported by volunteers will be funded in the future. A great many sports venues, parks and open spaces, along with all the opportunities they create, will depend upon this – and the volunteers who lend their time, energy and goodwill so prodigiously deserve nothing less.

Intelligence

Equally vital is clarity about positive and negative volunteer involvement, remembering to differentiate between the value of engagement for the participating volunteer and the organisation receiving the input. Experience suggests that while the overwhelming majority of volunteering input is founded on good intentions, the outcomes do not always end up matching the original ambition.

Organisations looking to transform the volunteer experience and the effectiveness of the volunteering input need to be clear about their own direction, contribution and outcomes. They also need to be clear about the management, funding and ownership of the environments, bodies and programmes to which their volunteers are contributing.

Within communities across the UK there is a whole raft of societies, ‘friends of’ groups, and voluntary clubs that adopt and perform a variety of stewardship roles for open spaces, sport, physical activity, allotments, parks, village and parish halls, play areas and community recreation facilities. In all these environments getting the desired transformation will depend upon a balance between, on one side, the support, engagement and co-ordination that might be interpreted as the imposition of ‘bureaucracy’, and the positive enhancement of the work of smaller groups and individual volunteers on the other.

All this work must also take into account the issues associated with, for example, age, gender, ethnicity, experience, and areas of high and multiple deprivation. There will also be local and project-specific improvement tools and mechanisms to be considered, including associated motivation and reward factors. When it comes to volunteering and working with volunteers, numerous strategies, processes and resources have been tried, tested and (to a lesser degree) evaluated. They may be of help to your improvement process.

Implications

If we’re talking about transforming the volunteering experience, the use of term ‘transformation’ might imply that volunteers on the ground, the ‘volunteers in charge’ and the professionals who manage and interact with volunteers have fully thought through what it is that they ask for and why. In truth, in the majority of cases a great many activities will have evolved around the need to react to local changes and circumstances. Across the annual (and longer-term) cycle of sport, arts, culture, open space, voluntary body or parks operations, more than we might like to admit will be based upon the characters of those interacting in the process rather than any specific overarching ambition.

Imperatives

All this means that any support provided must strike a balance: between leading and dictating; between direction and empowerment; between instruction and engagement. This support also needs to fit with the groups and individuals through which agencies look to ‘invest’ in excellent volunteer practices that align with their own strategic objectives.

Excellence in volunteer practices might include, for example: volunteer quality, recruitment and retention, improved communication and evaluation processes, a broader workforce with less pressure on key individuals, greater capacity to grow the workforce, and an ability to deliver an excellent experience for those involved.

Such processes need to consider and/or incorporate the key elements of a good volunteer experience, along with the skills and knowledge needed to enable the delivery of such an experience:

Examples of key elements of a good volunteer experience

 Preparation for the role
 Honesty about realistic time commitments
 Clarity about their place in the decision-making hierarchy, areas of influence, etc
 Whether roles are based on single or multiple tasks
 Levels of guidance and direction needed; and levels of guidance and direction actually available
 Volunteer induction when starting and when taking on a new role
 Volunteers’ understanding of, and respect for, each other’s roles
 Progress evaluation, recognition, appreciation and thanks, whether delivered personally or publicly.

Examples of the skills and knowledge needed to enable delivery of a good volunteer experience

 Leader/co-ordinator understanding of how individual volunteer roles fit within the overall environment, entity or function
 Appreciation of, and a commitment to, alleviation of personal work overload
 Leader and peer appreciation of the value of the volunteer role being undertaken
 The skill of the ‘task allocator’, including delegation, authorising, empowerment, recognition (of effort and achievement)
 The willingness of those in leadership positions to recognise, challenge and (if required) ‘weed out’ volunteers who limit or obstruct, particularly where this adversely affects the motivation (and ultimately retention) of other effective volunteers.

Attracting, training and deploying volunteers to work in areas such as tackling health inequalities, supporting the ill and unwell, or assisting people facing physical and mental health challenges and disabilities is hugely important. However, while the level of depth is often good, numbers are almost invariably low. Such work requires commitment for the long haul. As the number and proportion of people aged 65-plus rises there is a need to consider whether and how volunteer-based support can be provided to older people while also recruiting more effectively from this cohort.

Intentions

If we are trying to transform the volunteer experience one element of the solution might be to persuade those involved with leading and managing volunteers to better reflect upon what they, their people and their volunteers do, why they do it and with what results.

Few organisations find it easy to find time for volunteer leaders to discuss, plan, implement and review the actions they take to improve the volunteer experience. Organisations need to find a way to think about how they attract volunteer support, how long people stay in volunteering roles, which roles show the most attrition, and how volunteering in essential areas can be made more attractive and rewarding. Anything that can help them do this, or raise awareness of the range of support and guidance available, will pay dividends.

Investigation

Volunteer segmentation can also be a useful part of a transformative process. Considerable research has been undertaken into the motivation involved in volunteering but little which explores the motivational role of the different environments and experiences to which volunteers are exposed, for example age, duration of volunteering roles and recruitment routes.

Alternative segmentation approaches consider factors such as effectiveness, time commitments, and the extent to which the personality and attitude of ‘lead’ volunteers encourage or discourage the involvement of others.

While much discussion around these models will be essentially light-hearted and used to stimulate debate, such models do assist those involved to consider the nature of the volunteer resource they have at their disposal and the impact this has on their operation and progress.

KKP’s volunteer segmentation models encompass a range of such factors, including chronology, environment, background and potential motivations. While not exhaustive, the example below does illustrate the complexity of the sector and the level of knowledge, detail and understanding required to develop appropriate actions and resources.

Volunteer segmentation model

Inferences

While the sector may benefit from a transformative approach to the way it recruits, manages and deploys its volunteers, KKP’s extensive experience of working within and around volunteering suggests that terms such as ‘transformation’ can be problematic. What is innovative to one person may be standard practice to another. Alternative (if less ‘corporately sexy’) terms such as ‘learning’, ‘improvement’ and ‘development’ all imply change, whether that change is incremental, radical or revolutionary.

Perhaps the key is less imposition and more reflection (possibly with assistance), along with greater understanding and recognition of how an individual contribution at localised level underpins delivery of greater strategic ambitions and benefits.

Slightly corrupting a quote from an unnamed source: “Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections every so often but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.”

And slightly misquoting American humourist Leo Rosten: “The purpose of volunteering is to matter – to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference.”

 

31 January 2020

 

Following three years of intense research, planning and consultation, final plans for the new Chiltern Lifestyle Centre have been approved.

KKP is proud to have been part of the project team assisting Chiltern District Council in develop its strategy and assessing the feasibility to develop this flagship facility. We worked closely with colleagues at Space & Place Architects in the development of the concept and design of the state-of-the-art community lifestyle hub, which brings together a range of leisure activities and complementary services under the one roof

KKP prepared the full business case for the new facility and managed the community consultation and research for the development. Over 2,500 residents took part in the community survey which gave the Council the mandate for the investment, with many more supporting consultation events throughout the development of the project.

The Chiltern Lifestyle Centre will provide a wide range of sport, leisure and community activities and facilities including two swimming pools; fitness suite; studios; a sports hall; squash courts; climbing and bouldering; soft play and kids climbing; health spa; library; community centre and pre-school nursery.

David McHendry, Managing Director at KKP, said: “We’re proud to have supported the Chiltern Lifestyle Centre from its inception to full approval. We’d like to congratulate Chiltern District Council for having the vision for such an extensive, but much-needed, new local facility and we’d like to thank to all the clubs, key stakeholders and individuals who contributed to the development of the project.

“The blueprint for the Chiltern Lifestyle Centre incorporates the key benefits of co-location and demonstrates the synergy achieved by a complementary range of community services located under one roof. The operational challenge is to ensure that all the key user groups benefit from a centralised catering offer and extensive ancillary facilities without losing their identity.”

There will multi-functional use of the different spaces which will be able to cater for activities and agencies ranging from youth groups, University of the 3rd Age (U3A) to diving and swimming competitions.

The existing buildings on the King George V site will be demolished – apart from the historic barns – and will be replaced by the lifestyle centre. There will also be external sports equipment, a multi-use games area, play areas and associated parking and landscaping.

The old Chiltern Pools centre is no longer fit for purpose; having been built in 1965 it is not only aesthetically showing its age, but also requires urgent repair or replacement in some key areas of the facility, making it uneconomical to run long-term. The new centre has been designed to high quality standards which will reduce the ongoing management costs that arise from operating older centres.

The Lifestyle Centre, along with the improvements to the centres at Chesham and Chalfont will significantly reduce the Council’s Co2 emissions and will be one of only two A-rated buildings of this kind in the country.

 

23 August 2019

By KKP’s Director and Principal consultant (and keen golfer), Clare MacLeod.

 

It is to be hoped that the increased publicity surrounding this year’s Open Golf Championship leads to increased participation among both men and women on all courses.

We are continually told that golf is in terminal decline, that clubs need to get their act together and that shorter and more fun versions of the sport are needed.

Having been involved in the review of a substantial number of courses and facilities, my perception is that golf clubs are fighting back. Many have, at the very least, ‘bottomed out’ and are starting to show increased membership numbers (underpinning improved finances) despite not necessarily having opted to offer different versions of the sport (not that I am against this).

The number of women who play golf remains stubbornly low (only 15% of golf club membership – a figure lower than many other European countries). There is, arguably, a number of reasons for this and it is also true to say that we women golfers do not necessarily help the cause.

Take the term ‘working women’.  How often have you heard the phrase “we must help working women to play golf?” It is common parlance in many clubs and more importantly some actually mean it! I have real concerns about the use of this term as it implies that it is not common for women to work. In case you hadn’t spotted it, this is the 21st Century, women (alongside men) are educated to within an inch of their life, have career choices and the UK (in general) has really high employment rates. I don’t recall the term ‘working men’ being bandied about in the same vein.

Whilst certainly not the only factor, perhaps one step in the right direction is to look at competition opportunity and the doggedly stubborn view that ‘ladies’ should have competition days in midweek and if lucky an alternative day at a weekend (as long as it does not interfere with men’s competition). Are we not all golfers (who just happen to play off different tees…for that matter, why do we play off different tees)?

For the key Board competitions  (and following an 8-hour day at work for approximately eight weeks of the year) I can rush out of work, hope there is no traffic en route, get to the club, pull all my gear out of the car (hoping that I have remembered everything) run into the changing rooms to put on my shoes (can’t be seen putting them on in the car park as it is bad form), sign in (well I would do but the pro has left for the day) put my money in the box, meet my partner (who has deigned to play late) and stride of onto the first tee feeling as refreshed and ready as Rory McIlroy was on the first hole of Royal Portrush.

During August, we have to hope that there are no other players on the course as we do not wish to be delayed by slow play as the light is starting to fade (and particularly as I live in the North West, this is mixed with cloud and drizzle). Stories persist that rounds of golf have been known to finish illuminated by car headlights! Great for storytelling but not good if you are someone who wants to play her best, whatever your handicap!

Do I play my best golf…no, do I feel part of an inclusive club,…no, is there any solution… yes, of course there is.

A local golf club recently celebrated the fact that it allowed women to play in the men’s weekend competition in order to get their cards marked – a change championed by one particular member. It, however, begs the question in respect of whether we should be calling it a men’s competition or just ‘the competition day’.  Should we really be celebrating (rather than simply saying ‘about time’) what is an essentially minor and long overdue change…apparently yes.

Over two years ago, the club at which I play offered to do the same – it was the ladies who declined. Consequently, in a few weeks when we go to alternative day playing (we are fortunate in that I have found another female worker who can play at a weekend) I can play in the comp whilst all my mates play recreationally.

Are we really going to offend men’s sensibilities if we play alongside them and even let them mark our card? This does not yet necessarily mean joint competitions (that may be a step too far for even the egalitarian liberal men who play the game). Perhaps this is best tagged as a ‘distant dream’ for most of us.

We are all aware that events such as the Women’s Football World Cup and the Netball World Cup raise the profile of women’s sport and have a real impact on both men and women. As I travel up and down the country going about my business, I see women playing netball and football as part and parcel of everyday life. By consigning women to playing golf competitions midweek, we effectively hide the sport away from the general public, allowing some men to perpetuate the unequal status quo.

It is a right as a golfer to be able to play golf in competitions at a weekend regardless of gender. This one small step could have enormous repercussions across the sector…other ideas to follow.

Next week – membership fees!

 

6 August 2019

Copeland appoints assessor for open spaces

 

We have been appointed to carry out an open space and protected green space assessment for Copeland Borough Council, which will inform the borough’s Local Plan.

We triumphed over four competitors for the appointment, which will see the open and green spaces team contribute to Copeland’s evidence base for the new Local Plan.

Following the appointment, we will produce an updated open space assessment and review and recommend protected green spaces for the local plan.

We are asking residents, businesses and interested parties for their opinions on public open space in the borough including local parks and gardens, country parks; play areas for younger children; open spaces for older children and teenagers; general green space; allotments and churchyards.

Public open space provides opportunities for sport and recreation, socialising, tourism and wildlife, making an important contribution to the health and well-being of communities, ecosystems and economies. Copeland has a variety of public open spaces from allotments, to small local play areas and the larger parks.

However, up-to-date information is needed in order to ensure that there is adequate provision of accessible, high quality open spaces that meet the needs and aspirations of local communities, local people and people who work in or visit the borough.

Did you know, the borough is home to England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike, and the deepest lake, Wastwater? Both are located in the magical Wasdale Valley in the heart of Copeland.

To speak to the team about any open or green space contracts, please call 0161 764 7040 or email christopher.macfarlane@kkp.co.uk

 

12 July 2020

A new world-class £36m Sports Hub at the University of Warwick is now open creating one of the best sports facilities at a UK university – including the UK’s largest gym facility in the HE sector. To reinforce the University of Warwick’s ambition to be the “most physically active campus community in the UK by 2020”, the Sports Hub is open to all students, staff and the general public.

The new sports centre replaces the old sports centre on the campus and features a sports hall, a 12-lane swimming pool, fitness suites, climbing and bouldering walls and flexible studio spaces, as well as squash courts, outdoor 3G sports pitches and netball courts.

It will also be the official training ground of Coventry’s Wasps Netball super-league team.

For the University of Warwick’s feasibility study, we delivered concept development, master planning, capital cost analysis and revenue business planning, as well as leading on the consultation with senior staff members at the institution.

KKP is one of the UKs leading sports and leisure consultancies. We deliver feasibility studies for facilities of all scales, types and combinations; encompassing sporting, cultural and community provision including co-location, complex multi-agency, indoor, outdoor, adventure and water-sports projects developed under the auspices of a range of funding routes and partners. Clients include governments, local authorities, universities and colleges, commercial developers, schools voluntary and professional clubs.

During the last 2-3 years we have undertaken a range of projects at universities as diverse as Leeds, Royal Holloway, Aston, Glasgow Caledonian, Aberystwyth, Manchester, Salford and University College Cork as well a review of the Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS).  These all build upon other work undertaken across the sector over the last 16 years

For more information or to speak to a team member, please call 0161 764 7040 or email DM@kkp.co.uk

 

24 May 2020

KKP’s work across the University Sector stems back to the strategy for sport it delivered at the point when UMIST and the University of Manchester came together in 2003. In terms of the range of projects and HEIs with which we have worked, it is second to none.

We were involved in the initial and detailed feasibility stages on two of the most recent high-profile investments in major sports facilities at the universities of Birmingham and Warwick. For these we delivered concept development, master planning, capital cost analysis and revenue business planning, as well as leading on consultation with senior staff across both institutions.

During the last 2-3 years we have undertaken a range of projects at universities as diverse as Leeds, Royal Holloway, Aston, Glasgow Caledonian, Aberystwyth, Manchester, Salford and University College Cork as well a review of the Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS).  These all build upon other work undertaken across the sector over the last 16 years.

Not all of these focus solely on investment in new sports facilities. They cover a wider range of issues currently affecting the sector such as:

• The role of sport in the wider student experience.
• The role of sport reducing student attrition.
• Outsourcing the management of sports facilities.
• Impact-led sports directorate programmes.
• Optimum approaches to engaging the whole student base in physical activity.
• External funding opportunity.
• Developing different business models for service delivery.
• Reflecting UK policy, using sport to engage the wider local community.

The Government is currently reviewing how Higher Education is funded and is considering a reduction in the annual tuition fee to students, which currently stands at £9,250.

However, it is unlikely to make up the shortfall via any change to the funding regime. On this basis, for every £1,000 reduction in student fees, the Government calculates that the sector will lose £1 billion; reducing fees to £6,500 could, thus, mean a loss of nearly £3 billion.

But what might this mean for student sport? Unless a university is already planning to invest in its sports facilities, it may be less easy to include this in its longer-term financial planning. Universities will undoubtedly need to refocus their priorities, reduce staffing and become more streamlined. If parallels with local government occur, we could see moves to take out director of sport roles and subsume sport and physical activity within directorates which manage a wider portfolio of services. It might also lead to more outsourcing of sports facilities management, accompanied by a requirement to generate increased income from the community, students and staff.

Although sport and physical activity is not the primary factor when students are deciding which university to attend, it is an important (arguably vital) contributor to the overall student experience. Not just for those who represent their university in competitive teams but also for those who wish to keep fit, try new sports/activities, meet like-minded people and join new friendship groups. Given the wider pressures on students, being physically active is increasingly recognised as a positive contributor to mental wellbeing and the contribution it makes should not be allowed to be underestimated.

Although universities face major funding challenges, there is an increasing need to understand and do more to deliver on the wider role of sport and physical activity in relation to student experience rather than reacting by cutting or limiting services. Student sport does not need to be a drain on a university’s resources. It can be financially sustainable if facilities are of the right quality, services are geared to meeting the physical activity needs of the whole student body and the delivery mechanisms put into place are the right ones.

For more information or to speak to a team member, please call 0161 764 7040 or email DM@kkp.co.uk

 

14 May 2020

 On April 27th, our open spaces principal consultant, Christopher MacFarlane will have been with us for ten years. Here’s more about Christopher. 

To speak with Christopher about KKP’s open spaces services, please email Christopher.MacFarlane@kkp.co.uk or call 0161 764 7040

Name: Christopher MacFarlane

Title: Principal Consultant

How long at KKP: Ten years (on 27th April)

Typical duties/typical work day: I head up KKP’s greenspace and open space portfolio; acting as lead specialist in this area. I am also KKP’s in-house planner; drawing upon knowledge of planning policy to ensure clients are provided with the most relevant and up to date recommendations

Current projects/regions: I’m working on key open and greenspace projects in Dover, Arun, Kettering, Wirral, Uttlesford and Bassetlaw

Favourite aspect (s) of job: I enjoy the variation in where we work and the problem solving of different challenges facing local authorities with regard to open spaces and the competing demands of future housing growth

Interesting job related facts: I’ve worked on around 40 open space projects in the last 3/4 years and over 100 projects in total during my time at KKP

Outside work: I have in last 6 months also trained as a RoSPA play area inspector and I am about to do my 9^th year as a Green Flag Judge. I like swimming (including open water swimming) and I follow Moto GP

Here’s more about our open spaces work
http://www.kkp.co.uk/what-we-do/green-spaces/

 

25 April 2020

Playing pitch strategy coverage: Core cities

KKP’s pre-eminence in delivery of high-quality playing pitch strategies has been reinforced by further major commissions. We deliver more PPS needs assessments and strategies than any other UK practice and have unrivalled coverage across the ten UK Core Cities having delivered at least one iteration for nine – and worked with all ten.

One reason for KKP’s high reputation is the comprehensive, inter-personal on the ground consultation we deliver. This enables the gathering of a substantially greater level of local insight and understanding than can be generated from an over-reliance on survey returns. This in turn enables us to generate a comprehensive strategy and action plan which is key to driving investment into playing pitch improvements (e.g. from Section 106 and planning gain).

Recent (2019) commissions include Glasgow and Cardiff where we have worked to adapt the Sport England Guidance to account for the different sporting and planning landscapes.

Our work quality is reflected by the volume of re-commissions and the follow-up work in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.

Birmingham – the groundwork began in 2014, when we were commissioned to identify new delivery models for local grassroots football in Birmingham on a project jointly commissioned by the FA and Birmingham City Council. The latest PPS was delivered, by us, in 2016.

Liverpool – we completed the City’s 2013 PPS as a pilot for the new PPS Guidance: An Approach to Developing and Delivering a Playing Pitch Strategy (authored by KKP). We recently completed the 2018 update to inform the City’s FA Parklife programme.

Manchester – we produced the City’s 2017 PPS and Action Plan working closely with partners to develop a vision and objectives linked to potential FA Parklife submission. This iteration follows our delivery of its 2010 and 2013 strategies.

Newcastle – having completed its 2015 PPS we were commissioned to apply the Strategy and Action Plan to strategic housing developments and in doing so help to inform production of Sport England’s new Playing Pitch Calculator tool. We updated the City‘s PPS in 2018.

Nottingham – after delivering its 2015 PPS we were commissioned to update it in 2017/18 in lieu of a potential ‘Greater Nottingham’ application to the FA’s Parklife programme (which included hubs in Gedling, Rushcliffe and Newark & Sherwood – for which we have also delivered recent PPS assignments).

Sheffield – subsequent to completing its PPS in 2012 KKP was commissioned by the City Council and the FA to test the impact of developing a football hub sites across the city. This study gave birth to the FA’s Parklife funding initiative which has been rolled out nationally.

Key stats:

• Total number of site assessments undertaken by KKP on Core City PPS projects 2,000
• Total number of football clubs consulted with in Core City PPS studies c. 1,750

 

23 April 2019

This is the largest commission of its kind in the UK. The FA is looking to assess and set out its priorities at local level so as to underpin delivery of its National Facilities Strategy and inform discussion about required national levels of investment with local authorities, football partners and other stakeholders.

KKP is close to half way through its commission from the FA, DCMS, and the Premier League, to deliver 330 local football facility plans (LFFPs) – one for every local authority in England.  The first 71 have been approved and another 80 are in the process of final review by the FA or being signed off by individual project steering groups prior to receipt by the FA.

A review of the approved plans, which cover local authorities located in County FA areas of West Riding, Birmingham, Cheshire, Manchester, Sheffield & Hallam plus others, makes interesting reading. Thus far, a total of 1,850 separate projects has been identified across key LFFP themes:

• The development of 429 new 3G football turf pitches.
• Improvements to 2,305 strategically significant grass pitches.
• The development of new or refurbishment/replacement of 455 changing pavilions.
• Creation of 506 small sided football facilities including multi use games areas and futsal venues.

The Football Foundation is already working with partners to deliver the first tranche of these over the next 3-5 years. Being able to operate with this level of accuracy and detail is also enabling the FA, Government and partners to have an informed in-depth discussion on how community football investment is prioritised over the next decade.

KKP is delighted to be delivering this ground-breaking work on behalf of the football partners. We would like to thank colleagues across a range of organisations for their input into the various plans; including the FA, Football Foundation, County FAs, local authorities, clubs and community organisations.

This is an exciting time for community football across the country: KKP is helping to shape the facility base to enable the sustainability and development of the sport for future generations.

This winter we are working in London on the boroughs Local Football Facility Plans

In November 2017, the Football Association commissioned KKP to deliver 330 local football facility plans (LFFPs) in support of the FA National Football Facilities Strategy.

LFFPs involve engagement, consultation and report production that will be delivered between now and mid-2020 – over four tranches of local authorities.

KKP is currently working extensively in London, developing Local Football Facility Plans for 14 London Boroughs over the period to March 2019.  LFFPs present a fantastic opportunity to identify future investment requirements into grass roots football to grow and sustain the game whilst delivering on wider social outcomes. KKP’s work in the London area is particularly vital as the capital has an identified shortfall of third generation (3G) pitches and high levels of affiliated and recreational football demand.

London’s small sided 3G pitches, recreational park space and Multi Use Games Areas are acknowledged to be key to nurturing a pipeline of footballing talent, highlighted in this recent Guardian article.

KKP’s challenge, working with local football partners is to identify innovative opportunities to deliver new or improved football facilities in inner city, urban areas.   Pitches in confined urban spaces, rooftop pitches and disused underground areas can all offer alternative spaces to get people playing football. We will also aim to capitalise on linked funding opportunities such as the Laureus Sport Foundation’s Model City programme, using sport to encourage social integration in three London Boroughs of Haringey, Barking and Hounslow.

Furthermore, ensuring that the limited number of well used grass pitch sites in London are maintained to a high quality is critical for the affiliated game. On this theme our consultants have already met with strategic partners such as The Royal Parks Authority. Following a Sport England grant award, trials are currently being held at Regents Park to test hybrid grass pitch technology.  Early results are very positive with increased capacity on this new facility which is a big benefit at one of central London’s key sites for the affiliated game.

Our work in London will continue until March 2019, to deliver 14 ground breaking Local Football Facility Plans . We are looking forward to discovering and suggesting new and innovative ways of improving football facilities in the capital. Read more about the LFFPs here.

Postscript

In November 2017, the Football Association commissioned KKP to deliver 330 local football facility plans (LFFPs) in support of the FA National Football Facilities Strategy. As a sport and leisure consultancy with a proven track record in working in  playing pitch strategies, this work fits naturally into our portfolio.

LFFPs involve engagement, consultation and report production that will be delivered between now and mid-2020 – over four tranches of local authorities.

The LFFPs will set out a ten-year vision for football facilities in each local authority. They will identify projects to deliver (and partners with which to work) and form an investment portfolio for the majority of local schemes that require funding; 90% of all community football investment will be driven by LFFP content.

Importantly, the FA is broadening its focus so these plans include commitments not only to the affiliated game but also to investing in social, recreational and other forms of football delivery in a range of settings and with a variety of partners.

If you would like to speak with the team about our work with the FA and LFFPs, please email andrew.fawkes@kkp.co.uk 

Read more about what KKP does here.

KKP has been commissioned to deliver the 330 local football facility plans (LFFPs) for the FA National Football Facilities Strategy, which can be accessed at: LFFP Introduction – the FA.

We shall be managing the process of local engagement, consultation and LFFP production which will be delivered between now and mid-2020 – over four tranches of local authorities

LFFPs will set out a ten-year vision for football facilities in each local authority.  They will identify  projects to deliver (and partners with which to work) and form an investment portfolio for the majority of local schemes that require funding; 90% of all community football investment  will be driven by LFFP content.

Importantly, the FA is broadening its focus so these plans include commitments not only to the affiliated game but also to investing in social, recreational and other forms of football delivery in a range of settings and with a variety of partners.

More libraries, double opening hours, new state of the art IT equipment and extra services could all be on the books for library users in Salford.

The city, which launched the UK’s first free public library in 1850 is planning to buck the national trend by expanding its service in the face of hundreds of national closures or volunteers being drafted in to run libraries. KKP assessed library condition, location, catchment, usage, staffing, cost, catchments and the other factors that impact upon the Service’s value in, relevance to and impact on, the community.

Salford City Council is looking at investing up to £590,000 over the next four years across the service; which is managed by Salford Community Leisure Ltd (SCL). This includes spending £100,000 on replacing all IT equipment and providing digital learning as requested by members of the public. (The consultation process which accompanied the review reached more than 3,600 local residents).

The Council’s ambitious plans and the funding to be allocated over the next four years will see Salford libraries expand into seven new sites. These include its Helly Hansen Watersports Centre which will serve the Salford Quays area plus local leisure and community centres. Weekly opening hours will double and extra opening hours in the evenings and at weekends are also in the pipeline.

The proposed investment will assist the City Council, working closely with SCL, to save £1.26 million over four years via better use of technology and co-locating services.

City Mayor of Salford Paul Dennett said: “This will be an investment in the future of our city.

“Libraries not only help people learn, gain qualifications and open up better paid jobs, they also provide free access to digital technology which helps people save money and gain new skills. They are essential for lifting people out of poverty and developing a life-long love of learning.

The investment in IT facilities goes well beyond simply upgrading computers. Library visitors will be able to charge personal laptops, tablets and mobiles and print from them. Digital novices will be given more support to get online, while those wishing to seek more advanced or specialist learning will also be helped.

Mayor Dennett added:  “Last year nationally over 350 libraries closed and over 300 more faced closure or were being transferred to communities to run them. To be able to announce the complete opposite of that – expanding and upgrading library services – is amazing and such a bonus for the people of Salford. We cannot put a price on the return this investment will generate in terms of supporting local people to learn, grow and achieve.”

John Eady, Chief Executive of KKP said: ‘We are delighted with the outcomes of the review. KKP has worked on a range of assignments with Salford City Council and Salford Community Leisure; these include the libraries review, its playing pitch and indoor and built facilities strategies and on the facilities planning that underpins other upcoming investment. We are proud of being a long-term, trusted partner of the City and the Trust.

“KKP delivers strategic and service reviews for many local authorities in the UK including leisure/sports trusts, NGBs, social enterprises, CSPs and commercial operators. Specialist expertise includes governance, leadership/management, operation and performance management in sport/leisure, libraries, community provision, specialist sport/physical activity programmes, open spaces, parks and play

Link to the report:

https://sccdemocracy.salford.gov.uk/documents/s4792/Cabinet%2026917%20-%20REPORT%20Salford%20Libraries%20Service%20Improvement%20Programme.pdf

For more information about our strategic review and business development services, please go to http://www.kkp.co.uk/what-we-do/business-development-strategic-review/ email mail@kkp.co.uk

Or call 0161 764 7040.

A look back at our feasibility study for the International Sports Village – Iskandar, Malaysia, by KKP’s Chief Executive, John Eady

 

Feasibility studies are a large part of KKP’s business and we have undertaken many throughout the UK; which have led to some of the country’s key sports facilities. We have also been very lucky to have provided our expertise and advice to clients in China and Malaysia.

 

In 2014, KKP, working for Khazanah Nasional Berhad (Malaysia’s strategic investment funding body) delivered a detailed feasibility study, specification and business plan for a £40m sports village (the SVIM) in Medini, Malaysia’s second city.

 

The SVIM, which is in the process of being developed and includes a range of indoor and outdoor sports facilities designed to cater for a range of uses from international events and games based competition through to community sport and physical activity.

 

KKP’s feasibility encompassed assessment of domestic and world markets which greatly influenced our input into the design specification for the facility, in order to achieve the required outcomes.  Business plans, financial modelling, sensitivity analysis and long term lifecycle costs were factored into a comprehensive feasibility report.

 

As part of the study, KKP hosted various delegations from Malaysia to visit key facilities in the UK including Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the FA’s National Football Centre at St George’s Park, Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games venues, Old Trafford Cricket Ground and SportCity in Manchester.

 

The SMIV in Medini will have an extensive indoor sports arena with integrated spectator facilities which functions both as a major events venue and service anticipated demand from the growing adjacent city. It also encompasses extensive fitness facilities, squash, multiple studio spaces, retail and café areas plus sports science/medicine provision.

 

The facility will also have three full-sized floodlit artificial grass pitches, community grass pitches, futsal/five a side courts, cricket nets and commensurate parking and landscaping. The pitches will sit alongside a cricket oval with capacity for temporary searing for up to 20,000 spectators, enabling it to attract and host Indian Premier League matches.

 

John Eady, Chief Executive at KKP who led on the study, says: ‘This was a project that changed radically and fundamentally as a consequence of the feasibility process. Khazanah will develop a venue that achieves its international games and events aspirations, and enables Johor and Medini to deliver their respective commercial viability objectives’.

 

TOP TEN TIPS FOR COMMISSIONING YOUR NEW SPORTS/LEISURE CENTRE
By KKP’s Managing Director, David McHendry

 

KKP’s work with clients includes a long list of successful leisure centre projects. However, even the most responsible of building contractors will try to construct your centre as cheaply as possible.

This means that, if the process does not get the right level of expert supervision, ‘corners can be cut’. This then affects the longer term quality and maintenance costs associated with your building.

With this in mind, we’ve developed our ten top tips to ensure that your leisure centre is of the quality that you want:

1. Ensure that your Employers Requirements (ERs) documentation is comprehensive and robust. This should include fully dimensioned plans, sections, elevations, and comprehensive room data sheets (ideally an NBS specification). These are all essential.
2. If the Contractor’s Proposals (CPs) don’t match your requirements – deal with it. Make it justify every proposed change and make sure that what is done is right for you and the long term quality of the facility.
3. Get a priced risk register for, for example, ground works, services connections, diversions, site variables and any changes to legislation.
4. Ensure that your contractor’s proposal meets all the standards and regulations you need to conform to; e.g., Amateur Swimming Association, Sport England, PWTAG etc. Although the list can be long it is worth it. Make absolutely sure that these are all written into the agreement and the conformance to them is monitored and evaluated.
5. Get a branding document drawn up with expected level of finishes detailed and highlighted. This should dovetail with and complement your room data sheets.
6. Keep a watchful eye on room areas and heights. It is not uncommon as the design development progresses for rooms to get smaller and even, in certain circumstances, disappear.
7. Be realistic about the programme; but once agreed monitor closely and very regularly
8. Use an experienced leisure Project Manager (PM) who is directly employed by you the client, not the construction team. S/he will be your main ally managing the above issues. Ensure that you employ someone who understands sport/leisure buildings on your project management team. If you don’t you may miss things that make a considerable difference to the cost, flexibility and effectiveness of the building operation.
9. Do your best not to commit to one contractor team too early in the design process; this can significantly lessen your control and financial accountability. Keep the environment competitive for as long as possible to stop cost and scope ‘creep’.
10. Returning to point one; undertake extensive market testing and consultation before fixing the brief and the design. Ensure that all relevant experts and stakeholders have had a realistic input.

Not every contractor is out to take advantage of its clients but there is no doubt that subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) value engineering to deliver increased contractor profit is all too common – here is a list of some of the key ones to look out for:

• Store rooms and corridors shrinking and even disappearing; resulting in trampolines and table tennis tables being stored in corridors, ceiling so low that they affect lighting, ambience and the overall feel of a building – these are all potential casualties!.
• Tweaking of tiling specification and heights
• Downgrading of floor finishes; which can have a significant impact on the ability to keep changing rooms clean – especially wet change areas.
• Windows getting smaller and fewer in number, meaning that natural light is limited in areas where you would most want it.
• External works being downgraded to just basic seeded ground and poor tarmac with few kerbs; resulting in a poorer than expected ’arrival’ which can make a big difference to the customer experience.
• Fixtures and fittings not being included in room data sheets so that the cost of them bounces back to the client. Typical examples are pool hoists, hair dryers, mirrors etc.
• Complex ironmongery (door closers, handles etc.) not being to the right standard and, thus, not being able to cope with thousands of opening and closing actions per week over a sustained number of years….this only impacts on the quality of the customer experience.
• Phasing work and business continuity issues must be addressed in a timely manner – not doing so is inviting future problems.
• Insurances being missed – you, your staff and your building need to be covered; the contractor does not cover this.
• Site set up arrangements not being properly discussed and agreed prior to commencement – this is typically overlooked and is an area where substantial cost can then be added.
• Undercooked M&E specifications – leading to overcooked clientele in your studios and activity spaces.

We hope you find this useful. If you would like to comment or discuss this with us email DM@kkp.co.uk or telephone 0161 764 7040.