Leisure Futures

Oxford City Council is holding an ‘open day’ for potential partners on Friday March 3rd, 1.30pm – 4pm at Oxford Town Hall. This will enable potential partners to understand our vision and be able to ask questions. If you would like to attend this session please contact Hagan Lewisman (Active Communities Manager) at [email protected] by 5pm on the 2nd March, advising us of the names and roles of those attending.Thank you for considering us.Ian Brooke (Head of Community Services)

Oxford City Council prides itself in delivering world class services and innovatively finding new solutions to meet today’s challenges. We are an award winning council with an excellent track record. Like most councils, our budgets are under immense pressure, we have seen a £7m reduction in funding because of austerity measures. While the Council will do all it can to prioritise protecting services that support the most vulnerable, we will need to find new ways of doing things and need to take tough choices to balance our budget. Our leisure centres contract expires in April 2024, which provides an opportunity for these facilities to better meet changing community needs – to reflect this we are considering changing the name from leisure to Active Wellbeing Centres. We will look to provide the best possible leisure service – we will do this through a period of dialogue with potential operators and compare this with an in-house comparator. We want an innovative solution that balances cost and social value and to improve the role the centres play in delivering the outcomes in the council’s corporate plan. We also wish to explore how we can improve the links with parks and outdoor activity.This provides an opportunity to integrate local authority services to enable a preventative, customer focussed long-term model to be developed. We now have a window of opportunity to reimagine how Oxford’s leisure centres could play a more substantial role in tackling health inequalities that is more integrated with work by health and Oxfordshire County Council public health providers. The recently produced Fit for the Future: the role of district councils in improving health and wellbeing: makes a strong case for integrating council-run leisure and wellbeing services into the health system. Additional information: A more detailed brief is available via the in-tend portal or [email protected] are seeking expressions of interest to discuss the potential procurementOxford City Council is holding an ‘open day’ for potential partners on Friday March 3rd, 1.30pm – 4pm at Oxford Town Hall.