AN ENGLISH-based firm that runs several leisure centres across South Wales is set to take over Cwmbran Stadium and Pontypool Ski Slope.
The attractions are the flagship sites in Torfaen’s leisure centres that since 2013 have been run by the Torfaen Leisure Trust.
It is now set to lose its contract to run both venues and three leisure centres with Torfaen Borough Council’s cabinet recommended to award a new 10-year contract to Hereford-based Halo Leisure Services, which is a registered charity and social enterprise.
The Torfaen Leisure Trust has been hit by financial problems since the 2020 Covid lockdown and has required repeated additional financial support from the borough council including a £1.3 million bailout last July to meet its budget for the current financial year.
When the full council agreed to provide the extra cash in July it also said it would to start a procurement exercise inviting new bids to run its leisure services.
As a result of a tender exercise, which in July the council said Torfaen Leisure Trust could bid for, the cabinet is being recommended to award the contract to Halo which as well as running leisure facilities in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Stratford-on-Avon and Shropshire operates in Bridgend and Merthyr Tydfil.
In July, a number of councillors called for the council to take the leisure centres back “in house” but a report for the Labour cabinet states, on figures from 2024, directly providing the service would cost it £1.3m compared to £889,000 for an outsourced model with charitable status.
The report also said the council would have to recruit additional managers with expertise to run in-house leisure service and it couldn’t access the same financial support as a registered charity, including business rates relief.
The cabinet is recommended to approve a 10-year contract worth, £12,143,549, with Halo and the long contract is considered “the minimum level that would give suppliers the confidence to co-invest in the facilities and services”.
The council’s payments to the provider will start at the same level currently paid to the Torfaen Trust, excluding the additional support, and decrease every year by 4.67 per cent.
Contracts were considered on 20 per cent price, with providers able to promise a greater share of any operating surplus is returned to the authority scoring higher, and 70 per cent based on “quality” including plans to develop the service and increasing usage and how they fit in with the council’s plans to support healthy activities. Ten per cent of the contract was judged on “social values”.
Staff are expected to transfer to the new provider, with their terms and conditions protected under TUPE arrangements, and Halo will also need to maintain “a comparable pensions arrangement” for existing staff and offer new staff membership one of either, the local government scheme, membership of a relevant public service scheme or an auto-enrollment scheme that meets the requirement of 2008 legislation.
The contract is due to be approved at a special meeting of Torfaen’s cabinet at 3pm on Tuesday, February 4 and it is expected the new operator could take over from “early spring”.
The council’s other centres are the Bowden Active Living Centre, at Ysgol Gwynllyw in Pontypool, Fairwater Leisure Centre at Cwmbran High School and the Pontypool Active Living Centre in Pontypool Park.