INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
“We need to build facilities for people who don’t currently use them”
What are the sector’s growth opportunities? The biggest opportunity is to properly position our industry, rebranding from fitness and leisure to health and wellness and making sure what we build is relevant to the wider population. We all know how big an issue the health of the nation is: a predicted 8 million people on NHS waiting lists by summer 2024, just under 28 million people living with chronic pain, high levels of obesity, diabetes, musculoskeletal issues, an ageing population who are currently living longer but in poor health… Our sector is starting to better deliver on some of these challenges, aligning itself with wellness and the health agenda, but we need to do more – and it’s in the ethos of public sector operators to do this.
Just as one example, imagine the power of delivering prehab programmes where we could quantify the financial savings of reducing patients’ time in hospital and/or recovery time post-op… The problem is, across local and national government, thinking is done in four-year cycles. It makes it hard to persuade people to invest in longer-term preventative initiatives. But we do have to do something different if we’re to get more people more active, and for me it comes down to repositioning what we do. That might mean beginners’ gyms within the wellbeing centres of the future. It might mean going out and leading armchair exercise in bingo halls. But it definitely needs to come from better integration with health and active ageing.
I think councils are beginning to move away from seeing leisure as a cost to instead see it as a value proposition
So, what might that look like? Historically, we’ve had co-location: a doctor’s surgery here, a library there, a gym over there. All in the same building, but not really linked. Better than that is integration, where thought goes in to how the different services interact to really live and breathe wellness. Budgets mean this won’t happen in every centre we build, but with the ticking time bomb we’re facing, honestly, it’s pretty much now or never. We either sort it out or we might as well pack our bags, and so far our sector has only really built better facilities for people who already use them. What we need to do now is genuinely build facilities for people who don’t currently use them. I’ve also set up a health supergroup of talented, like- minded people to look at how best to embed health-related programming across the sector. In other words, when you build a wellness centre, what do you do at the end that makes it a wellness facility rather than a leisure centre with a different name? This project is in its infancy, but it’s a priority for me in 2024. What changes would you like to see in the sector? I’d like to see wellness become a statutory service, with an obligation on the public sector to provide facilities for communities to be fit and active. I’d also like to see a continuation of better integration into the health agenda, and I think the move towards insourcing is very interesting in this respect.
But better sharing is also key. There are already pockets of amazing best practice around the UK, where public sector operators have linked with the health agenda in brilliant ways. Abbeycroft Leisure is a great example, Wave Active in East Sussex another. But there is no central directory, no repository of all these great programmes where people can dig in and find something they can replicate in their area.
Wellness should be a statutory service, with a public sector obligation to provide facilities for communities to be active
Sharing best practice could be key to scaling great initiatives and moving the health discussion forward
It will be hard to persuade leisure management contractors to share their best practice, because they’re competing for contracts across the country. But among individual councils with a specific geographic reach, sharing best practice could be key to scaling great initiatives and moving the health discussion forward.
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STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2024
STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2024
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