About Leisure Connection Watch

 LCW is an independent site about Leisure Connection Ltd. (LC). These web pages are not owned or operated by that company.

LC manages many sports facilities on behalf of UK local authorities and organisations. LC's brands include Harpers Fitness. What sort of job does LC do?

I have been greatly disappointed with LC's work at Vale Farm Leisure Centre, or "Vile Firm" as some users have come to call it. For over five years I have complained about poor standards to LC and Brent Council, including three stage-three complaints to Brent's Chief Executive. There has been little, lasting improvement. Other centres have had problems with LC and some disappointed local authorities have ended their contracts with LC. 

These things have prompted the setting up of Leisure Connection Watch. 

In April 2004 Leisure Connection and Brent Council were informed of this site and invited to contribute short statements in response, which may include links to their own websites for more detailed information. If and when replies are received a new sidebar link, "Comment ", will be added. 

Some people have asked me why I bother and others why this form of protest?

I do sometimes wonder if I had known in 2001 how much time and effort it would take to get improvements at Vale Farm Leisure Centre, whether I would have joined a private sports club. I didn't expect LC to be so resistant to good practices nor Brent Council to be so incapable of managing the contract. 

Having got this far, I don't feel like quitting. The more I have unearthed about LC the more I  sense there is a national issue if not scandal. I am not against privatisation in principle but it seems that  leisure centre users were poorly served by many councils rushing or being rushed to award contracts. 

I still believe that the improvements are possible. From my work as an Organisation Development Consultant I know that managers are very averse to bad publicity. Private letters can be ignored but not bad news that is there for the world to read. From the comments of several people, it seems that LC would much prefer LCW disappeared. I will consider closing the site when it appears that the issues that started it are no longer happening.

Why a website? I have found my local papers little interested in letters, press releases or other pieces of information about Vale Farm.  More understandably, national media are less interested in parochial stories. 

I spend much time in meetings and working for different organisation so the idea of starting a public group to campaign was less attractive. Developing the website is something I do when it suits me and, when the software behaves itself, can even be relaxing.  

I have become interested in how much information about LC I can find via the web and how to find it most easily.  There is also satisfaction from the feeling that I am contributing to developing the Internet as another resource for consumers and local democracy. 

I have reasons to feel sympathetic to some of the people caught up in this wrangling. Twenty-five years ago I worked at a Sports Centre in Islington for a  year, initially because my accommodation had no hot water. In the early 80's I worked in local government for four years. From conducting dozens of focus groups and interviews with employees I know most want to do a good job or at least felt that way when they joined. 

Paul Burns