From Private Eye

Rotten Boroughs Column,  Issue 1216  August 2008, p.11  - Maldon

POOLING RESOURCES

The ongoing closure of council-run swimming pools up and down the country, higlhlighted  in Eye 1211 are bad enough - but how safe are the ones that remain open?

On 15 June, seven-year old Michelle Gellard drowned at the Blackwater Leisure Centre in Essex during a "special fun day". Within hours of Michelle's death Maldon District Council had distanced itself from the tragedy. Its statement read: "The council wishes to make clear that whilst Maldon District Council owns the Leisure Centre Building, the facility is managed under contract to the council by Leisure Connection Ltd." 

Leisure Connection has featured numerous times in the Eye in recent years, principally in connection with cleanliness at the pools it manages, but there have also been complaints about lifeguard cover. 

FoI requests by pressure group Leisure Connection Watch to Maldon Council for information on the performance of Leisure Connection prior to the accident were refused under Section 31 (Law Enforcement) of the Act, as disclosure was deemed prejudicial  and "not in the public interest".

In a macabre game of pass-the-parcel, police handed the investigation to the health and safety executive,who passed it to Maldon Distict Council. The council then issued a statmetn confirming "Leisure Connection Ltd will play a key role in the investigation". So no possible conflict of interest there. 

Rotten Boroughs Column,  Issue 1197  November  2007, p.13  - Easington, Lambeth, Castle Morpeth, Grantham and Oadby & Wigston

POOL SHOW

Two years ago Graham Farrant was appointed chief executive of Leisure Connection (LC), a company specialising in running local authority leisure centres which has attracted flak because of  poor hygiene at many of its swimming pools (Eyes passim).

New broom Farrant - 2002 winner, as chief executive of Barking and Dagenham Council, of Rotten Borough's blue-sky thinking award - was brought in to help LC clean up its act. So how's it going?

In February of this year Easington district council issued its second warning notice to LC about Seaham Leisure Centre after it was found that half the vending machines were out of order, carpets were unclean, ashtrays full and the kitchen "deplorable". 

The following month Lambeth scrapped its contract with LC after Streatham leisure centre was found to be filthy with mould on the walls and aging equipment. 

In April, Castle Morpeth borough council received a report from independent consultants on the state of its contract with LC who run two of the council's leisure centres. Maintenance, cleanliness and housekeeping were all found to be "poor", basic faults were rectified "painfully slow" and it was noted there had been a shortfall in investment lover three years.

In August swimmers at Grantham complained they were fed up with dirty facilities, which included excrement and used nappies regularly found on the floors of changing rooms. 

In September Oadby and Wigston borough council in Leicestershire fined LC £2,500 for its failure properly to clean two leisure centres it managed.

In July LC was put up for sale for £50m. To date there have been no takers. Swim anyone?

Rotten Boroughs Column,  Issue 1145  November  2005, p.13  - Lambeth, Ely and Hackney

SWIMMING IN IT

One of the the most unsavoury examples of "outsourcing"  to have affected former public services has been the transfer of public swimming pools to private operators such as Leisure Connection (Eyes passim). 

In south London the Streatham leisure centre pool has shut its doors 20 times in the last nine months. Ten of the closures were down to boiler  failure, eight were due to the discovery of vomit or faeces in the pool, two were down to staff absenteeism. The manager was suspended in July, pending an internal investigation. Despite all this Lambeth Council carries on with its contract with LC, even though, since 2003, the company has been a major debtor according to the council’s environment performance digest reports. As of July this year LC owed Lambeth more than £150,000.

LC’s contract for East Cambridge District Council includes running the Ely Paradise Pool, where swimming lessons for children attending King’s school, a pre-prep school for four-to-seven-year-olds, have been cancelled indefinitely after parents branded the pool “disgusting”. Parents and the head teacher, Felicity Blake, stopped children going there after urine and faeces were found covering the floor of the changing rooms. This was after a six-month, £300,000 refurbishment.

In Hackney, east London, few tears are being shed as LC bows out. The premature termination of the 15-year contract is not good news for shareholders though, as the firm received £l.5m a year, regardless of whether any of the borough’s four swimming pools were open or not (Eye 1100). In the last days of LC’s time there, swimmer Claudia Rymer found a tampon in the King’s Hall swimming pool. Staff didn’t seem bothered, so she had to remove it herself. She then pointed out where she had put it to a lifeguard who kicked it into a corner. Anyone for a dip?

The above Private Eye look at LC coincided with Graham Farrant being Chief Executive for one year. Have any LC leisure centre user's noticed a difference? Has it been less of a new broom and more of make do, mend and muddle through with the grotty old besom? PB

Rotten Boroughs Column,  Issue 1122  December 24,  2004, p.11  Dorking and Hackney

MOLE IN A HOLE

AFTER Eye 1102 reported on problems at Mole Valley council’s Dorking swimming pool, “outsourced” to private firm Leisure Connection - a Which? magazine survey had concluded the swimming pool posed a “potentially serious health risk - we received a cross letter from conservative councillor Rosemary Dickson, who conceded that while there had been problems with cleanliness at an “old and out of date” pool, the council now had “lovely new facilities”. 

Yet, we hear, there are still cleanliness problems and staff and customers arc not impressed by Leisure Connection’s proposal to cut gym supervision and lifeguard cover, leaving the gym unmanned and only one lifeguard to cover two pools at times. The management’s latest brilliant cost-saving idea is for staff to scour changing room lockers for forgotten £1 deposits. 

Rotten Boroughs Column,  Issue 1121, December  2004, p.11  Great Yarmouth

THE TURD WAY 

MORE on the problems at council swimming pools “outsourced” to Leisure Connection (LC) in places such as Hackney, Brent, Dorking, Salisbury and Cheltenham. Earlier this year Great Yarmouth borough council gave LC six weeks to repair broken lavatories, sinks and tiles at its Marina sports centre or face termination of its contract.

Further problems have “surfaced” at the Marina in the form of floating turds spotted by swimmers m the past few weeks. Probation officer Karen Stubbs describes bathing at the Marina as like “swimming in a sewer”. Other complaints include sanitary towels and nappies left on the changing room floor, drains blocked by hair and cracked and filthy tiles around the pool.

Mrs Stubbs, who takes her eight-year-old son to swim at the Marina, said LC staff seemed unconcerned about one stool in the pool, doing nothing for 30 minutes before fishing it out with a net. Health and Safety regulations require a pool to be closed in such circumstances until all the water has been filtered and cleaned.

 A Leisure Connection spokesman told the Eye: “A complaint received on Sunday November 21 that there was a piece of excrement floating in the pool at Marina Leisure Centre was immediately investigated by the duty manager on shift. It was discovered that the offending item was actually a brown pebble from the landscaping which surrounds the pool and this was fished out of the water. No trace of excrement or faeces was found.”

Mrs Stubbs is adamant that she knows a turd when she sees one. “It definitely wasn’t a pebble,” she tells the Eye. 

Last year Cheltenham axed LC for its abysmal standards of cleanliness. Will Great Yarmouth be next to decide it’s not taking any more shit from Leisure Connection. 

The first report of faeces at the Marina Centre is on the Great Yarmouth page, dated 25.11.04

In a following issue of Private Eye a letter appeared from David Welsh, working in a leisure centre not managed by LC. David pointed out that Health & Safety do not automatically require a pool to be closed because of solid shit if disinfection levels are adequate, though it should be removed promptly. More liquid effluent ("diarrhoeal fouling") should mean closure and  cleaning.

Rotten Boroughs Column,  Issue 1115, September 2004, p.11

Graham “Club Class” Farrant, who is quitting as chief executive of Barking and Dagenham council after four-and-a-half years. Farrant (Eyes passim), whose liking for jetting halfway round the world to spout corporate pseudspeak at conferences earned him his affectionate sobriquet, is to become chief executive of Leisure Connection, the private firm whose pisspoor management of council leisure facilities at authorities including Hackney, Salisbury, Dorking, Great Yarmouth, Brent and Cheltenham has featured in Rotten Boroughs. Clearly a company in need of Farrant’s “blue-sky thinking”. Perhaps Leisure Connection staff would benefit as much as did B&D’s in 2002 when Farrant spent £40,000 getting 180 council officers to prance about in Arab headgear and pith helmets for a “team building” day.

Rotten Boroughs Column,  Issue 1102, March 2004, p.11

IN AT THE DEEP END 

LEISURE CONNECTION, the private firm which earns £I.5m a year for running Hackney’s intermittently-open swimming pools (Eye 1100), manages 120 sites under 50 contracts across Britain, mainly with local authorities. Like Hackney pools’ opening times, its record is patchy.

Last year a report on Salisbury’s new £6m pool found that within three months of the opening cere­mony facilities were “dirty”, the swimming pool a “shambles”, waste-water filters were clogged with hair, thermostats broken and there was no hot water in the showers — similar problems to those that bedevilled Hackney’s “state-of-the-art” Clissold pool before it closed.* 

In 2002 water quality tests conducted by Which? magazine at Mole Valley council’s Dorking swimming pool concluded that it posed a “potentially serious health risk”. Eighteen months ago it was revealed that, at Great Yarmouth’s seafront Marina Sports Centre, cleaning and maintenance equipment were poorly maintained. The kitchens were so dirty that a catering firm providing food for a conference felt it necessary to call in environmental health inspectors rather than risk poisoning delegates. 

In Brent the health and safety standards at Vale Farm leisure centre are the subject of a council inquiry. ** Meanwhile Cheltenham booted out Leisure Connection in 2003 after seven years of mismanagement. 

Swim, anyone?

*LC's solicitor claimed that the "gist of that article (the one above) is that our client's operation of leisure facilities is generally poor and in particular has caused the closure of Clissold Leisure Centre." I leave people who read LCW to draw their own conclusions about LC's standards. My reading of the Private Eye item does not lead me to the same conclusion as the solicitor. See legal correspondence on LCW for further details.

**At the risk of offending Lord Gnome, I am not aware of any Brent Council inquiry into health and safety at Vile Firm. PB  

From Rotten Boroughs, Issue No 1105, April/May 2004, p.11

Brent Fleece

BRENT council is facing questions about how it managed to lose around three quarters of a million pounds in a local property deal that shafted a successful charity-run sports centre.

Kinnor, a small Jewish charity in north London, started renting land from the council at Stag Lane, Kingsbury, in 1976 at an annual rent of £350, later raised to £600. With small amounts of money from the govemment and council, the charity managed to build a thriving community and sports centre with squash courts, a sports hall, table tennis and a canteen.

The centre was very popular and used by up to 600 people a week. But in 1999 trustees of the Kinnor charity were dismayed to hear that Brent council had decided to sell the centre’s freehold. It was bought at auction for £46,000 by Warborough Investments Ltd, part of the empire of Paul and Simon Upward, who own and run the Ocobase Group which, according to the Sunday Times rich list, makes them worth around £40m. 

The new landlords immediately imposed a new rent of £35,000 a year, which Kinnor could not possibly pay. So the charity surrendered the lease and its workers were evicted. A few months later, Warborough sold the "unencumbered” freehold of the building for a whopping £780,000 and then proceeded to sue the trustees and even the voluntary charity workers for half a million pounds more because of dilapidations and unpaid rent. 

Their case was chucked out in the chancery court by acting judge William Blair QC (Tony’s older brother), but individuals involved in the charity still face the threat of further legal action by the company. They are puzzled by the behaviour of Brent which appears to have lost roughly £750,000 on the deal and no one can work out why.

Letters to The Editor Issue 1103

 Dorking Talking 

I am a Mole Valley councillor and I took exception to your paragraph (Rotten Boroughs, Eye 1102) about the Dorking swimming centre. Yes, there was a problem with cleanliness in 2002. This was immediately corrected. 

The Dorking sports centre was about to close as it was old and out of date. Mole Valley DC has since built a new sports centre which was opened ~ by the Duke of Gloucester not long ago and which the Queen and Prince Philip may have seen on their visit to Dorking on 21 March. If you would like to come and see it for yourself you would be more than welcome.

 Please put a correction in your next column and announce the lovely new facilities that Mole Valley has provided for their residents to enjoy

 CLLR ROSEMARY DICKSON,

Several things puzzled me about Cllr Dickson's reply. 

1) There was nothing incorrect about what Private Eye reported so why ask for a "correction". The brief mention makes clear the event took place in 2002 and that the finger is pointed at LC rather than the council.

2) The councillor's reference to "a problem with cleanliness" could be seen as incorrect or at least downplaying what Which? (June 2002, pp 8-11) described as a “potentially serious health risk”.

3) Does the  Councillor think that the incident is excused by the fact that there is a new pool or that the area was visited by royalty? How is this relevant?

 It is a matter of record that Mole Valley District Council accepted that there had been failings. The District Council Community Committee minutes for 25 June 2002 include: 

“Leisure Connection had been aware that 'Which' had undertaken this survey and also knew the results. However, they had not informed the Council of this. The Director of Services was not aware of the survey until the day before it was published. The Committee expressed a number of concerns relating to standards at the swimming pool and the Director of Services advised that monitoring had been increased and improved systems put in place to ensure the required standards...”

PB

Cllr Dickson was informed of these comments on April 28 and invited to contribute up to 500 words. No reply was received.

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