Facility investment business planning

Since its inception in 1999, Tameside Sports Trust has worked hard to raise capital investment to redevelop and modernise its facility stock. In 2006, based upon a robust business plan developed in conjunction with Knight Kavanagh & Page (KKP), it secured a 3-year grant agreement with Tameside Council. This has enabled it to base future planning and investment decisions on sound management information and market intelligence.

KKP worked with the senior management team and Board of Trustees to ensure that its plans were innovative yet robust and practical accompanied by a clear and detailed plan of action. This approach proved successful, securing buy-in from all levels of staff while allowing KKP's consultants to challenge how and why the Trust operates in specific ways.

This led to a major facility improvement programme underpinned by an £8 million capital investment at three sites across the Borough.

Click here to read more about his project. 

We have, over the last five years, provided advice on a range of facilities development, feasibilities, business planning and related projects including: 

• Development of its management information and reporting systems. 
• Service level agreement to manage (up to 10) school sports facilities.
• PPP arrangements for capital development with Pulse Fitness.
• Strategic planning for redevelopment of specialist gymnastics and indoor bowls facilities.
• Business planning for new dry-side sports facilities at the new Ken Ward Leisure Centre.
• Development of a company strategy for the period 2010 to 2013; linked to a restructure of the senior management team. 

Improving business performance

Sport and leisure operators face huge financial pressures over the coming years. Given sport and leisure's usual position ‘at the back of the queue', there is a need to think smarter about how efficiencies are achieved preferably without compromising service scale or quality.

In 2010, KKP was asked to support development of the 2011-2014 Company Strategy. The Trust recognised the need to significantly increase income in order to remain financially viable in light of actual/planned reductions in management fees and anticipated rises in expenditure.

This stimulated major challenge within the organisation reinforced by the agreed need to build on its sound foundations. Essential to this was to put in place the right structure, improved working practices and systems and processes that will deliver additional income. All this was done mindful of the fact that this is a time when many residents and customers face personal economic challenges. The key objectives of KKP's work were to: 

• Articulate the 'purpose' of the Trust moving forward.
• Identify a revised service structure to drive the delivery of this agreed purpose.
• Develop a practical Company Strategy to define targets for the next three years, key actions to take forward and their associated fit with the service structure.
• Identify key financial targets to be set and achieved via implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan. 

In so doing, we have evaluated, in-depth, operational performance; income generation, key product areas, costs, structures, and management information. The resulting re-shaping extends to a new, more focused range of product/sales managers with a clear concentration on occupancy, income generation, sales (and also servicing leisure card based users more effectively). There is a concurrent increased emphasis on marketing and performance measurement to provide the intelligence needed to support business development, customer care and cross-selling.

We are now assisting the Trust to implement change to install the structure designed to optimise occupancy, income and service delivery.