Revitalising community health: South Tyneside’s leisure investment

South Tyneside Council has invested over £33m in leisure, yielding a growth from 414 to over 10,800 memberships since 2013. As explained by Council Leader, Cllr Tracey Dixon, their strategy includes state-of-the-art facilities, virtual fitness, and a focus on health and wellbeing, especially targeting areas of high social deprivation and inactivity among the elderly.

Despite unprecedented challenges for local government, we are committed to making South Tyneside a place where our residents enjoy good mental and physical health throughout their lives, supporting them to live healthy, happy and fulfilled lives – one of the key ambitions in our South Tyneside vision.

Our leisure offer is instrumental to achieving this, which is why we have invested so heavily in our buildings, programmes and staff.

Funded entirely through the Council’s capital scheme of works, our investment has been significant, with more than £33m directed towards new and improved facilities over the past decade.

As a result, the number of leisure memberships has grown steadily in line with the investment – rising from 414 memberships to more than 10,800 since we launched our flagship £16m swimming pool and leisure complex Haven Point in 2013.

Over that time, we have opened our £13m Hebburn Central development and invested £3m in transforming Jarrow Community Centre into Jarrow Focus.

Both Haven Point and Hebburn Central house premier wet and dry side facilities and have received multiple design awards, including a prestigious distinction from IAKS (The International Association for Sports and Leisure facilities). The gym space at Jarrow Focus features a unique functional fitness rig which when opened in 2019 was the first of its kind in the UK.

Our most recent investment has involved a £700,000 refurbishment of Monkton Stadium’s facilities to include a state-of-the-art new ‘green gym’. The technology involved converts user movement into clean electricity, and since opening in summer 2023, it has generated more than 26,000 watt-hours of green energy – enough to power an electric bulb for 5,260 hours and equating to a cut in Co2 emissions of almost 20,000 grams.

Virtual fitness and investment in digital facilities have also been key contributors to our success. The installation of large-scale cinematic screens allows people access to a wider range of class disciplines at times which are more convenient to members. We work closely with global fitness brand Les Mills to deliver a number of exclusive fitness masterclasses from our venues, providing members the opportunity to train with some of the world’s very best instructors.

Other improvements have included the introduction of an online booking system in December 2020 as leisure centres reopened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A new leisure services mobile app introduced in 2022 also gives leisure members 24/7 access to a host of features enabling them to manage their workouts effectively. It provides easy-to-access timetables and session availability, as well as the ability to make bookings, cancel sessions, and set up alerts and notifications.

Since moving over to the Legend technology, the app has been downloaded nearly 19,000 times, and averages around 5,200 hits per day. Now 91% of our bookings are made online.

The system also gives us an insight into our customer base, meaning that services can be further developed to better meet their needs in future.

As an area of high social deprivation where heavy industry has left many of our residents with a legacy of industrial diseases, we understand perhaps more than most the importance of health and wellbeing.

Our business model moves away from traditional leisure activity, diversified to cater for public health priorities and made more accessible through lower costs, a wider range of concessions and the use of new technology allowing people to manage their own fitness.

By retaining our leisure services in-house, we have kept complete control of our offer with the flexibility to change operating times, activities and price points quickly to meet the specific demands of our customers.

Research carried out by Sport England, as well as other indicators, consistently identified South Tyneside as having high rates of inactivity, particularly in individuals aged 50 and over. We decided to target this cohort by offering bespoke services at an affordable price. As a result, a number of specialist programmes are now delivered from our leisure facilities in partnership with the NHS.

Over a third of our business is generated through some form of concession (typically those aged over 60 and the unemployed) or via provision of a specialised service, such as arthritic pain management or pulmonary rehabilitation.

We are extremely proud of our unique Healthy Lives pathway, which complements our general fitness programme, giving people more opportunity to exercise across the life course – from birth through our Maternity Wellbeing sessions to supporting older people with long-term health conditions.

By providing affordable access to high-quality, low-impact, relaxed exercise, our Healthy Lives programme has removed some significant barriers to entry and now accounts for 12,000 visits per year.

We have also been successful in engaging young people through the introduction of family-based exercise sessions within our gym spaces.

While it’s too early to make a direct correlation between our leisure investment and health improvement, we know that more people than ever before are using our facilities to keep fit and well, with memberships at an all-time high across our six leisure sites and around 1.5 million admissions per year.

Despite the record number of admissions and memberships, we are not complacent and remain committed to improving our leisure offer to meet the needs of our residents.

By investing in leisure services and adapting our offer to cater to ever-increasing demand, we are not only building resilience for the future but also helping to safeguard the health of our residents. We continue to improve the experience for our users so that we can provide them with the best service possible in their journey to adopting healthier, more active lifestyles.