“Ladywood Leisure Centre is a fantastic resource for local residents. In the period it’s been open I have noticed a change in the local area whether that’s a reduction in anti-social behaviour or a general change in attitude to lifestyle and fitness. The community has benefitted massively since the centre has opened.”

Daniel Meese, Police Community Support Officer, Ladywood

Ladywood in Birmingham is one of the most deprived regions in the UK, with low employment and high rates of childhood poverty. Opening a brand-new leisure facility in this area would bring fresh challenges, but by focusing on the needs of the local community, offering sessions that they could afford at times they could attend, we have managed to create a genuine grassroots success story, utilising an inclusive approach, while never forgetting that this is a commercial venture that needs to pay its way.

Before the centre even opened, our on-site team were working with employment agencies to set up a recruitment Open Day, only available to Ladywood residents. Hundreds attended the event, many of whom were long-term unemployed, but when Ladywood opened its doors, it could boast that over 50% of its staff were people from the local area, which has helped greatly in getting ‘buy in’ from the people in this region.

Offering a suite of free and subsidised sessions means this centre is able to offer the residents of Ladywood the opportunity to stay active in a state-of-the-art facility, which may have seemed out of their budget range when they first saw the impressive building go up.

At Ladywood, we have achieved the golden combination: a centre used by local people of all demographics offering subsidised access to a high-quality facility, while managing to keep revenue lines growing all the time. Pre-COVID swimming lesson numbers have recently been smashed, casual swimming is up on pre-2020, the list goes on.

One final element we’re very proud of at Ladywood is how we’ve opened up and promoted the free use of our Community Room, where we house all manner of different sessions, from dance classes to a base for the local chess club. Many leisure centres claim they’re a community hub, but at Ladywood Leisure Centre that claim is a reality.

Aquatics is something Serco Leisure is known for, something we do well. We were UK Pool & Spa’s Leisure Operator of the Year for 2018 and 2019 – the only two years we entered. Our centre in Bangor, Northern Ireland, The Aurora won the 2018 World Cup of Pools competition. Pre-COVID, we ran an industry-leading annual competition for lifeguards, which received huge praise from the RLSS. (We’re planning to reintroduce the competition in 2022.) We take swimming seriously, but our growth in 2021 has taken even us a little by surprise.

But we shouldn’t have been surprised really. We hired right and it’s paid off. Our National Aquatics Team, all new for 2021, are headed up by the indomitable Helen Bull, a former runner and champion swimmer, who due to cancer now uses a wheelchair, but hasn’t let that get in the way of her living and achieving. Helen is the only wheelchair user in the UK who’s also a fully qualified swim and lifeguard teacher. Her passion for all things aquatics means there’s a new energy around Serco Leisure’s swimming pools.

As of October 2021, just 6 months after April’s partial reopening, and across the board, our swimming lesson numbers have exceeded our benchmark figures from February 2020. Swimming memberships, often a tough sell, are on track to leapfrog pre-COVID’s numbers by the end of November 2021, while casual swimming is proving more popular than expected as families return to an activity much-missed for most of 2020 and the first part of 2021.

These successes come off the back of a huge amount of hard work by the new National Aquatics Team. Joining Helen, we have Lynn Goring-Crook, National Aquatics Training Lead. Lynn’s appointment is testament to our drive to have the best trained aquatics workforce in the business.

Lynn’s a Swimming Teachers Association (STA) Aquatic Tutor with 'Train the Tutor’ status who’s experienced at developing talent with small and large teams including managing inspiring swim programmes, staff training and career pathways.

Then there’s Jenni May, Commercial Aquatics Development Manager. Jenni has 25 years of leisure experience and is working alongside site leads to look at opportunities to enhance and grow their lesson programmes and maximise pool space. She’s also a Swim England and STA Tutor, passionate about getting as many people as possible utilising our pools for aquatics activities.

We’ve also added experts like Cheryl Hoey, who’s currently heading up our aquatics contracts in Maidstone and Swale. And we’re recruiting in other areas. Serco Leisure will soon have more people working in this area of the business than ever before, signaling our intent to grow and develop aquatics to previously unheard of levels of popularity.

Stretch Outstanding is the highest ranking a site can achieve via NBS Quest, the leisure industry's leading benchmarking service. It is only awarded to those facilities consistently demonstrating the highest standards of operational excellence.

99% of facilities in the UK, which go through Quest, do not match up to this most stringent of assessments. Bisham Abbey and Lilleshall National Sports Centres, which Serco Leisure operate on behalf of Sport England, have achieved Quest – Stretch Outstanding for an incredible three consecutive cycles.

Quest does not check a site on a single day or a single week. it is a continual process to ensure the high standard of service delivered by one group of staff will be replicated across the facility, whichever team is on duty. This is why Bisham and Lilleshall’s achievement is so noteworthy. It demonstrates an embedded culture of excellence at every level. From cleaning staff to catering, front of house to fitness, the teams at these iconic national centres work year-round to stay at the top.

Recent finalist in the ukactive Outstanding Leadership category, Operations Director, Steve Nelson oversees the centres for Serco Leisure.

“Achieving the first ever Quest Stretch Outstanding back in 2014 set the bar high for teams at both facilities, but they’ve risen to the challenge for each assessment cycle. What’s been so pleasing to me is that underpinning so much of our success has been the four core Serco values of Pride, Innovation, Trust and Care. Teams genuinely believe in those values and it shows in the quality of service they deliver day in and day out.”

Quest’s Operations Director, Caroline Constantine, said:

“Lilleshall and Bisham have once again demonstrated that there is a quality of culture throughout the venues on any day of the year, as this is the third time they have achieved Stretch. Well done to all the teams there, a fantastic accolade.”

Charles Johnston, Director of Property at Sport England added:

"It’s great to see the work the centres do being recognised like this, from the relationships they’ve formed and nurtured with key NGBs to the work they do with the community to encourage people of all ages and abilities to get active, using the high quality sporting facilities they have on their doorsteps.”