ABSTRACT
This paper examines how public sport facilities in England, which are dependent on subsidy from local authorities, have performed during a period of recession and austerity. Using data derived from Sport England’s National Benchmarking Service, we track the changes in a series of key operational performance measures to investigate how local authority sports centres have fared between 2005/6 and 2015/16. Four dimensions of performance are analysed: access, finance, utilisation, and customer satisfaction. The study includes 1116 sports centres. Our results show that the financial efficiency of English public sport facilities has improved significantly in the face of a reduction in local authority expenditure on sport and leisure services. There appears to be a business model in the sector that includes outsourcing management and raising activity charges, which has been accompanied by higher levels of customer satisfaction with price-related service attributes and with the overall experience of using a facility. A possible explanation for these findings might be an improved quality of provision and greater customer orientation. At the same time, there appears to be a diminished focus on social inclusion objectives. A key challenge is how to achieve market development whereby new and targeted customers are attracted.
