That was the year that was… 2022 is a year many in local government and the sport, physical activity and active wellbeing and cultural sectors will want to forget. However, despite sluggish recovery in many areas, labour market shortages, rising supply chain and construction costs, inflation and to top it…
Battered through the Covid pandemic. Sluggish recovery. Increased supply chain costs. Recruitment and retention issues. UK and global economic instability leading to the cost-of-living crisis. Utility costs decimating any gains made through efficiency, programming, and service innovation. The public sector leisure sector is going through an existential crisis, according to…
Duncan Wood-Allum, Managing Director of SLC reflects on SLC’s recent experience of supporting Councils through their sport, physical activity and leisure procurements. In this blog he explores timing and planning procurements, risk transfer, changing realities and perceptions and offers some hope for the future. Timing is everything Unforeseen delays are…
There’s a scene from Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hanks, having fought his way up a section of Omaha beach in a hail of bullets, comes across a young private sheltering behind an obstacle. The private asks him ‘what the hell do we do now, Sir?’. Another soldier shouts ‘What’s…
In January 2020, Bristol City Council published their Sport and Physical Activity Strategy for 2020-2025, developed in partnership with SLC.
As the sector looks into the void of the COVID-19 lockdown and its aftermath, SLC’s Managing Director Duncan Wood-Allum presents a Blueprint for a positive future for local authority leisure, sport and physical activity. This has been developed to provide an adaptable vision and roadmap for shaping future services – one that does not leave the most deprived and excluded in our society behind.
Duncan Wood-Allum explains why there is no better time for local authorities to start taking a more strategic approach to planning their future sport, physical activity and leisure services.
Over the last five years in the midst of the most challenging financial cuts, there has been a great deal of learning across the sector and some local authorities have been having a big impact in the most difficult circumstances…
SLC’s David Rushton considers the impact of the 2017 European Court of Justice’s Ealing Case, Carillion’s collapse and an increasing political lobby to bring services back in house. Will this reverse the trend in leisure management outsourcing and result in more local authorities bringing services back in-house?
In her inaugural article, Is the Tide Turning?, Anna Lunn, Research Consultant at The Sport, Leisure and Culture Consultancy, discusses the recent Sport England Active Lives Survey, highlighting where progress has been made, shifts in our activity behaviour and the persistent inequalities which remain.
In his article, No Investment? No Future., Toby Kingsbury, Director at the Sport, Leisure and Culture Consultancy (SLC), highlights the huge challenges facing public leisure facilities and explains how those local authorities willing to invest can deliver successful and sustainable facilities that support wider strategic outcomes.