Agenda item

5.1  Ian Holland, Head of Leisure and Green Spaces, gave a brief overview of a paper which was available within the agenda packs.

5.2  He said that all savings for 2016/17 were set to be achieved from a renegotiation of the Council’s Leisure Contract with Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL).

5.3  The paper also explored other potential avenues for savings and greater income generation which would need consideration if, as was expected, the service was required to work within further reduced budgets for 2017/18 and 2018/19.

5.4  Options around income generation included greater sponsorship activities, increased catering and ice cream concessions in parks, offering spaces for corporate events and the delivery of more major events.

5.5  Options for delivering savings were around a review of the Council’s offer in supporting and enabling the scale of community events, lesser grass cutting and gardening activity, more locations being kept unlocked overnight, and restructures of the service to reduce staff costs (and service capacity).

5.6  Thanking the Head of Leisure and Green Spaces for the presentation and the paper, she said that Parks were a function of the Council which served all residents. She was thankful for the quality of green spaces (reflected in the number of Green Flags awarded to the authority), which was often commented upon by people living in Hackney or visiting the borough.

5.7  After the Chair invited questions on the paper, a Member asked that Kim Wright, Corporate Director Health and Community Services gave an update on the amount of savings that the Council expected to achieve, and its progress in identifying where these savings would be produced from. He noted that the papers seen during this meeting looked at options to save relatively low amounts in the context of Councillors having been previously advised that savings of many millions were likely to be needed.

5.8  The Corporate Director Health and Community Services said that the Council was still working on a basis of needing to achieve £60 million spending reductions during the three years to 2018/19. £16 million had been identified at this time. However, it could not be guaranteed that savings in excess of £60 million would not be required until full details were known of the Comprehensive Spending and other relevant proposed changes to finance arrangements (business rates and others).

5.9  On the papers giving options for savings of relatively low amounts of money, the Corporate Director said that the scale of reductions which were likely to be required meant that the Council needed to give consideration to how all of its services could contribute. Without doing this, there would be an increased risk of not being able to meet the financial challenge. Also, where services had small budgets relative to those of some other areas (Leisure and Parks compared to Adult Social Care for example), the savings that they proposed could be smaller in value while also being significantly larger as a proportion of their overall budget.

5.10  A Member asked about the scope that there was for more large scale, commercial events in parks to help answer the savings challenge. She asked what downsides there were, and whether there were barriers.

5.11  The Head of Leisure and Green Spaces said that a key barrier was the availability of suitable sites on which to cater for large scale events. Only Hackney Marshes was big enough to deliver major events. This site was common land and to be able to hold events to cater for 40,000 to 50,000 people, permission would be required from the Planning Inspectorate. A move to hold events on the site (there were currently none) would be likely to face some opposition.

 5.12  One downside of holding events on the Marshes was that there would be an impact on football pitches, which covered the full ground. While the Service would design contracts and charges in which event organisers would pay for the renewal of pitches and any other remedial action required following the event, there would be an impact on the volume of good quality pitches available immediately after an event.

5.13  One Member said he felt that if events were carefully managed and delivered outside of the football season wherever possible, that their negative impact could be reduced.

5.14  The Head of Leisure and Green Spaces agreed that the impact on the quality of space from large scale events could be minimised (although not eradicated) through effective management. The 2012 Radio 1 weekend on the Marshes, while well managed and delivered, had given points of learning to the service which would help reduce the impact on the area that any future events would have. 

5.15  Another Member said that he would support the Council establishing a professional event management function for Parks which could ensure that the events allowed to be held were carefully chosen, and that they were managed well. He felt that a service should be in place which balanced an offer of commercial events with community events.

5.16  The Head of Leisure and Parks said that the service had an Events Manager with significant experience of enabling the delivery of large and small events. The challenge for him as Head of Service, and subject to the agreement of Members, was to ensure that her workload was rebalanced to allow her to dedicate more time to building up contact with and attracting, providers of big events to the borough.

5.17  A Member sounded a note of caution around a move to hold more large events. She said that there was already a perception among many residents that there were a lot of large scale events in the borough (sometimes due to Victoria Park often being considered to fall in Hackney) and she felt that many would not be amenable to more.

5.18  A hostility towards commercial events was coupled with a (rightful) demand for the high levels of cleanliness and maintenance of parks to be maintained. Residents really valued parks and green spaces as key facilities for the borough.

5.19  With the Council needing to find significant amounts of savings, she accepted that there might be little choice but to be more open to commercial events, which could help fund the maintaining of standards in the borough’s open spaces. However, she felt that the Council would need to manage communications on this very effectively.

5.20  Invited to feed in at this point, Cllr McShane, the Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Culture, said that he fully agreed that any extension of commercial events would need to be managed carefully. He said that communications on the benefits that they delivered would be vital. He felt that there were lessons to learn from how Islington had worked to clearly demonstrate to residents how various improvements in Finsbury Park had been made possible by the delivery of events which might not always have been popular. The Council would need to maintain its dialogue with Park User Groups.

 5.21  He also felt that the Council had made a misjudgement in the way that it had consulted on holding five events per year on Hackney Marshes, further to the delivery of the Radio 1 weekend in 2012. He felt that the consultation should have been a lot clearer on the positive impact that this would have in terms of the maintaining and improving of public services. He felt that results could have been more amenable to higher numbers of events if the message had been clearer.

5.22  A Member said that Park User Groups were hugely important and played a key role in ensuring a community voice in park management. However, the scale of the budget reductions which were needed were vast. For Members to effectively deliver their mandate, and to work to restrict the impact of budget reductions on an overall level, all avenues needed to be considered.

5.23  A Member said that it was clear that communications would be vital if there was to be a move to more commercial events. She asked if, in addition to the Finsbury Park example, if there were others that the Council might learn from.

5.24  In response, the Head of Leisure and Green Spaces said that his service delivered one large annual event, in Haggerston Park. Found was targeted at 20-25 year olds, and attracted numbers of 7,500. The Events Manager had worked hard to engage residents and the Park User Group who were initially opposed to the event. Through her being willing and keen to meet residents and users, and by working to ensure that the site was returned to normal use quickly after the event had closed, the event had now become a generally accepted item in the calendar which delivered a revenue stream.

5.25  The Chair noted that the paper showed the service to charge low fees for community events, including large scale ones. She said that the commitment of community groups to hold events was a key strength of the area. However, she asked if charges could be revised or if events could be delivered in tandem with one another to reduce costs.

5.26  The Head of Leisure and Green Spaces said that there was significant demand from community groups for their events to be clearly individual. He said that he would welcome a review of the way that the Council catered for community events. While they were clearly important, these event types accounted for the majority of the Event Team’s time, with officers needing to help ensure that they were run properly and were safe for the park and for those attending. The paper gave proposals around a new charging regime for community events, informed by scale.

5.27  A Member shared the view that community events were important. However, she felt that there was scope to review the range of community events being delivered to ascertain whether some might reasonably be classified as commercial events. She felt that some events organisers expected significant levels of support from services for little cost, while also profiting from their delivery. She said that she thought there was room to look at the charges made in these cases.

5.28  Another Member said that while he was happy for new models to be considered, that he felt it important that the Council continued maintain a community event support offer.

5.29  A Member agreed with this point, but thought that the approach could perhaps be better balanced through profit making events being asked to contribute more towards the cost that the Council incurred by supporting them.

5.30  The Chair at this point brought the discussions on commercial and community events to an end. She suggested that the next set of Budget Scrutiny sessions (to look at potential savings for 2017/18 and 2018/19) should consider this in more detail. In addition, she was keen that future meetings looked more in depth at any scope for increased volunteering involvement.

5.31  However, she asked that the remainder of the item be spent on Members asking any questions around the renegotiation of the GLL Leisure Contract. This meeting was focused on savings for 2016/17, and the paper showed that the renegotiation was where all savings for this period were expected to be achieved from.

5.32  The Chair asked whether the renegotiation would have any impact on the service received by customers. She also asked if the work would involve a contract extension.

5.33  The Head of Leisure and Green Spaces said that the negotiations were underway and were expected to be concluded during November. There would be some changes to service provision but the impact was not predicted to be significant. The Hackney Marshes Centre would be closed for access during the week, except for when it had been booked for events. Data had shown that the main centre had attracted little weekday usage. The Centre toilets and café would remain open all week. There would be some changes at Queensbridge Sports Hall to enable a health and fitness offer. Further details could be shared outside of the meeting, as they were currently subject of commercial confidentiality.

5.34  There would potentially be an extension of contract. The service continued to work towards achieving its aim of having a leisure contract in place with zero cost to the Council.

5.35  The Chair asked Members if any had concerns around the proposals on the Leisure contract. None were expressed.

5.36  The Chair then asked the Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Culture if he could give a view on what he would take away from this discussion.

5.37  In response, the Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Culture said that he had found the discussion useful. He had heard a clear commitment from Members that parks remained at a high standard, and continued to be a key Council offer to residents and visitors. There appeared to be a willingness to explore the capacity for and value of catering for large events. Finally, there was a view that community events and the charges attributed to them might be reviewed. This should help ensure that while there was still a community event offer, that the charges applied to them were more reflective of their size and the costs in officer time which were associated with them.