Agenda item

To receive an overview of the Authority’s Culture and Leisure provision.

The Sub-committee received a presentation from the Senior Manager, Cultural Services and Senior Manager, Sport & Leisure, which provided an overview of the Authority’s culture and leisure provision including the scope of services, costs, and policy priorities.

The Authority’s culture and leisure provision accounted for over 3 million visits by members of the public over the course of a year.  This included visits to indoor and outdoor sports facility provision; involvement in the Active North Tyneside/Public Health programme; Sports development; engagement with libraries and Customer First Centres; visits to museums and St. Mary’s Lighthouse; and audience figures for Playhouse, Whitley Bay.  In addition, the wide range of events across the Authority’s summer and winter programmes engaged both residents and visitors, helping to sustain the tourism economy, which supported local businesses and helped to generate jobs in the Borough.

The impact of these services, which were for many the frontline public face of the Authority, helped shape the borough’s unique sense of place and made North Tyneside a great place to live, work and visit.

The Sport and Leisure team was responsible for managing a wide range of services including the Authority’s 5 leisure centres and pools; indoor sports facilities. outdoor leisure facilities - sports pitches, bowling greens, welfare and recreation grounds, mini-golf/foot-golf; Sports Development – including clubs, cycling development, holiday activities, sports coaching, school sports and street games. The Active North Tyneside/Public Health Teams’ provided programmes targeting inactivity, health and wellbeing, obesity and delivering preventive services focussing on better health outcomes for residents.

Policy priorities included maintaining a commercial focus; delivering a policy steer on Public Health and Social Care, Cycling and Support for the strategic approach to borough wide priorities.

Members were provided with service information relating to Posts (449); User visits (1.7 million); EASE cards (36,000); and Contours membership (9000), and with a financial breakdown of controllable expenditure of £7,670,797; controllable income of -£6,604339; and a net controllable budget, of £1,066,658.

The vast majority of expenditure was down to the running costs of leisure centres but that the income generated kept cost down without detriment.  There had been an increase in leisure centre users over the last 10years.  Running costs had been reduced, whereas income generation had increased, the increase was helped in part by growth in Contours membership. 

The Cultural Services team was responsible for managing the Authority’s 4 Customer First Centres, Branch Libraries (14), Community centres, Tourism and Events, Museums (19), Heritage and Arts. 

Members were provided with service information relating to Posts (150); Library visits (1,297,634); Library issues (565,165); Active Library users (30,492); The Playhouse attendances (80,445); the growing St Mary’s Lighthouse visits (80,686); Visits to Segedunum and Stephenson Railway Museum (88,920); Visit North Tyneside Active users (49,546); and Events programme attendances (202,200); with a financial breakdown of controllable expenditure of £8,386,730; controllable income of -£2,897,619; and a net controllable budget of £5,489,111.

Policy priorities included Culture Health and Wellbeing; Events sponsorship; Tourism promotion; Cultural investment – St Mary’s Lighthouse, Segedunum, public art; and North of Tyne cultural offer.

Members were informed that much work was being done to enhance the borough’s many cultural/heritage facilities and attractions to engage residents and visitors such as the biggest event ‘The Mouth of Tyne’ Festival, the popular summer and winter festivals, heritage open days, and community centres/libraries throughout the borough.

Following the presentation, Members of the sub-committee asked a series of questions of officers. During questioning members examined areas including:-

a)         Local plans for the expansion of leisure centres and gyms in the borough by seeking contributions from developers to improve and maintain existing facilities.

b)         Statistics for measuring impact on users of facilities, which would be covered in more detail in the Active North Tyneside Annual Report to be submitted to the next meeting.

c)         Highway infrastructures in relation to the completion of cycling route developments.

d)         Partnership working in supporting clubs via grants and practical help in their development e.g. Whitley Bay junior football factory, Lotty Park, Wideopen, Wallsend Boys club etc.

e)         Plans for completion of the Bathhouse roof at Segedunum which although there had been delays, costings were currently being looked at which would be considered as part of the bigger development plans for the site.   

f)          The ways in which health factors/issues were being linked to social subscribing, GP referrals, baby clinics etc., which would be covered in more detail in the Active North Tyneside Annual Report to the next meeting.   

The Chair on behalf of the Sub-Committee thanked officers for presenting the Culture and Leisure overview and recognised the achievements of both teams for the work being done to promote and develop the Authority’s services with the limited budgets available.

It was agreed to note the presentation on the Culture and Leisure overview.