interview
MARK SESNAN
Co-operative ventures, diversification, the Olympics, and the trouble with procurement. The MD of GLL talks to Kate Cracknell
I
f the spending cuts of 1993 led to the birth of the leisure trust movement, then the current economic conditions have
reinforced their key role in the sector. This is the view of Mark Sesnan, MD of the UK’s first ‘spin-out’ leisure trust, GLL. “Local authorities have their backs
against the wall right now and they’re desperate to fi nd alternatives to closure. And that’s how the leisure trust movement originally came about in 1993: we felt it was better to set up something alongside the council rather than continuing to work within the council and take the cuts. “Now there are about 110 trusts in
sporta, running one-third of the UK’s leisure centres. They’re all different, with different corporate structures – some are registered charities, some are industrial provident societies, some are stakeholder-driven, some are employee-led – but they all need to be
charitable to get tax benefi ts, so there’s only a certain number of structures you can use. The key thing is that they are all not for profi t – genuine trusts. “All of sporta’s leisure trusts have to
sign a ‘charter of integrity’. What the private sector does is up to them, but I don’t want people ever to confuse the private sector ‘trust’ model with the real trust. They’re completely different.”
procurement pains He continues: “The model the
government is now looking at for all public services is based on our type of employee-led mutual model – effectively taking the people who do the job from within the council and freeing them up to do it better alongside and outside the council. That means you can work in different boroughs, be more creative with what you do, act and react in the marketplace faster… As a result, GLL has been able to grow into a strong
The London Borough of Hackney is one of GLL’s 25 partners, with sites including Clissold Leisure Centre
business with 25 different partners over the last 18 years.” But GLL is selective in its choice of
partners. “There are local authorities that, in their tenders, will specify the criteria as 80 per cent price and 20 per cent quality – but we don’t do low wages or low quality. We work with authorities where the bids are 50/50 quality and price, sometimes 60/40. This proves that striking a sensible balance between quality and pricing can be done. “However, there are a lot of issues
around procurement: it’s a science that’s never been a science, because there’s no training in it, no real best practice. It’s often in the hands of a few consultants who can make up the rules as they go along.” It quickly transpires that
procurement is a particular bugbear of Sesnan’s. “If a local authority wants to set up a leisure and/or leisure and cultural trust, it should be free to do so,” he says. “I don’t really know why that needs to go out to tender. I think the big scourge of our industry is the way procurement is handled. Current procurement practice assumes that you can commoditise the service in a way that takes it down to pounds and pence. This is not helped by some consultants, who make their living out of making the procurement process as complex as possible – all of which can often mean a lot of wasted time, effort and cost. “All that’s happening is that they’re
driving down the price and taking the money away. But if you work in local government, you know that other departments such as education aren’t doing that. They’re not saying ‘we’re going to provide a better service and do it cheaper’. They say ‘if you want a better service, you have to put more money into it’.
30 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital august 2011 © cybertrek 2011
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