John Leaver

John Leaver was recently appointed to the board of Alliance Leisure, which specialises in transforming leisure facilities. With 20 years’ experience in the sector, he says one of the biggest changes he has witnessed in the sector are the expectation levels of customers

You’ve worked in physical activity for more than 20 years. How has the sector changed during that time? In some respects the sector hasn’t changed – leisure centres still provide physical activity opportunities to varying degrees of success. The arrival of low-cost operators shook the sector, but are now an accepted part of the landscape.

For me, consumer expectations have changed most and they are savvier than ever. As a result, we’ve deployed more customer-focussed sales models that prioritise experience and retention.

What’s most satisfying is that more people are active today than 20 years ago, and we’ve played a part in that. And I don’t mean the 15% who have a membership that the sector always talks about – this doesn’t account for those on GP referral programmes, who play 5-a-side football or take the kids to the waterparks we’ve built. There are some ongoing conversations about the ‘language of leisure’. Accepting that we are a physical activity sector rather than just sport and leisure would be a great start, but more work is needed to define who we’re for and what we deliver.

If you’d list the things that the sector does better today, than it did when you first started, what would those be? The sector is more customer-focussed and sensitive to the needs of users. In the past, customer engagement was only deemed necessary for planning applications. Today we conduct stakeholder engagement exercises to genuinely understand local needs before drawing up plans. Social media and survey platforms allow us to gather the views of large user and non-user groups.

Marketing efforts have evolved too. In the past, the fitness industry has had a poor reputation for using body image campaigns to encourage people to exercise. By contrast, TA6 creates emotional campaigns that resonate with very specific groups of society. Industry standards have improved in response to evolving customer expectations and operators strive to exceed those expectations. I applaud CIMSPA’s efforts in professionalising the workforce and the work of Quest and ukactive in enhancing the benchmarks for operators. As a result, the calibre of the workforce we recruit from has never been better.

Today we conduct stakeholder engagement exercises to genuinely understand local needs before drawing up plans

What does Alliance Leisure do - what services does it provide? Alliance Leisure is a leisure development partner working with local authorities across the UK to transform their leisure facilities. We support our clients through every stage from scoping and feasibility, design and product selection to construction and post-completion support.

Our chief executive, Sarah Watts, launched Alliance in 1999 to modernise ageing centres and make them more commercial. Squash court conversions and gym refurbishments kick-started our journey. Today our developments span waterparks, tenpin bowling, indoor adventure climbing, zipwires and more. We talk about the art of the possible when scoping a project. I liken it to Henry Ford’s quote: “If I asked the people what they wanted they would have said faster horses”. Too often our industry builds faster horses – another leisure centre with the standard sports hall, pool, gym and studio offering. At Alliance Leisure, we don’t build faster horses, but constantly challenge the norm.

Over the years we’ve introduced new activities to the sector. We created the UK’s fi rst public sector spa facility at Inside Spa and installed Europe’s tallest sky tower and the UK’s fi rst immersive studio at Salt Ayre Leisure Centre. We’ve installed numerous TAGactive sites, built an eco café and developed the UK’s largest indoor wooden skatepark.

We’ve also received awards for our achievements, including the Design Build Award at the 2018 ukactive active awards and the coveted Supplier of the Year in 2022.

Our support division, known as TA6, provides marketing, people development, insight andresearch, strategy and customer engagement services to over 200 leisure facilities every year. We are unique in the sector; no-one else supports local authorities in this way. Next year we celebrate our 25th anniversary. To date, we’ve developed over 240 projects with an investment value of around £350m.

To date, we’ve developed over 240 projects with an investment value of around £350m

You are the Marketing & Framework Director and were recently appointed to the Alliance Leisure board. What does your new role entail? For 17 years I’ve coordinated our marketing strategy while delivering client-facing services, such as sales training within TA6. My new role sees me focus on driving the company forwards. Despite the changes facing the sector – cost-of-living crisis, energy costs, COVID recovery, fi nancial pressures on local authority budgets – there are huge opportunities.

We have over £500m of projects at various stages of construction or scoping and our research shows there’s another £1bn of projects with other contractors or architects in development. My job is to increase our visibility and credibility so we can continue to build relationships, challenge the norm, offer bespoke solutions and deliver success for our clients.

Alliance Leisure is seeing strong growth. Could you tell us more about that? Since 2017 we’ve been the delivery partner for the UK Leisure Framework, which has sped up project delivery. Prior to this, most developments were the result of procurement exercises that added weeks, sometimes months to a project. The UKLF can reduce this by as much as six months allowing authorities to act quickly and make efficiencies in the early stages. With construction inflation adding hundreds of thousands of pounds to delayed projects this represents a huge saving for councils. The quality of our delivery, supported by our in-house knowledge and expertise, is key. We are the glue that brings the different partners together - contractor, architect, QS, project manager - to deliver successful projects.

How do you see Alliance growing over the next 3-5 years – what are the future plans for the company? We’re very much linked to the local authority agenda so replacing ageing stock, increasing collaboration with health partners and maximising central government funding all influence our plans. We’re always looking for new solutions and revenue-generating activities for public sector facilities.

We will continue to nurture partnerships that enhance our offering and support clients’ objectives. We recently worked with Future Studios using their 360 degree screen projection technology to create the first immersive fitness space of its kind in Wales.

We also expect increased demand for TA6’s services. The team recently conducted stakeholder engagement for a development that generated 4,000 public responses. Delivering civic pride isn’t possible without true stakeholder engagement.

How do you see emerging technologies – and “going digital” in general – shaping the future of the physical activity sector? As a sector we’re not known for being early adopters of new technology. For example, you can order most things online with one click, but to join a leisure centre you sometimes still have to go to the venue to complete a paper application form.

Adoption of technology varies hugely across the sector. We’ve been exploring Web3 and have seen operators using cryptocurrency as payment options, NFTs to create membership packages, artificial intelligence to manage customer service enquiries, reward schemes based on blockchain technology, and virtual worlds to showcase services and facilities. We’ve teamed up with Ollie Bell from Roster to guide us in this exploration, which will identify opportunities and educate both our team and the sector in this exciting new space.