Sentinel Leisure Trust is leading a wellness revolution in the east of England as it develops its commercial arm to create a positive impact on the local community. Kate Parker talks to Chris Ames, Sentinel’s head of business development

When was Sentinel Leisure Trust established?
Sentinel Leisure Trust (SLT) was formed in 2011 when Waveney District Council outsourced the management and operations of its leisure and outdoor services.

A somewhat bumpy road followed, with the trust facing a loss of £1.2m during its first year of operation. However, its fortunes were quickly turned around after a new board of trustees and a new senior management team were appointed in 2013, and that loss became a surplus this year.

How is the trust structured?
SLT is a charitable a non-profit distributing organisation (NPDO) where any profit is reinvested in services or business growth.

Then we have its subsidiary company, Sentinel Enterprise Limited (SEL) – the trust’s commercial arm – which delivers any responsibilities that aren’t charitable. This includes, for example, the trust’s outdoor services: beach huts, boat moorings, golf courses, caravan parks and so on.

All profits earned from SEL are ploughed back into the trust’s charitable objectives and go towards reducing prices, improving facilities and increasing access.

Councils are going to be facing growing pressure to significantly cut their budgets. We want to get as much revenue as possible through our commercial arm to support our charitable activities and ensure leisure services are sustainable in the future.

What does your commercial arm allow you to do?
The main thing is it allows us to keep membership prices at our leisure facilities down and accessible to as many people as possible. We manage contracts in some of the most deprived regions in the UK and we do everything we can to engage with people who wouldn’t normally consider going to their local leisure centre, to get them thinking about their health.

We offer access to the best equipment and programmes for £34.95 a month – and that’s across five gyms, six pools and five studios, with some 250 free classes to choose from each week. We also have a relaxation thermal suite and spa at Waterlane Leisure Centre, and we’re looking to develop more leisure centres.

As our commercial arm has grown, it’s also allowed us to look at other activities and initiatives that meet our charitable objectives. The Changing Lives scheme is one such project, launched in 2013.

What is Changing Lives?
The scheme came about through one of our trustees who highlighted the case of Marc Rivett, who at the time worked in outdoor services. He’d lost his speech and ability to walk unaided after suffering a stroke in December 2013.

In January 2014, Marc began an intensive 12-week rehab programme with East Coast Community Healthcare, and then progressed onto a sponsored six-month fitness and personal training package with Sentinel.

The success of the programme, in terms of Marc’s recovery and his return to full-time employment, became the inspiration to seek out more people we could help. Changing Lives was born.

How do you identify candidates for the scheme?
They tend to be highlighted by East Coast Community Healthcare (ECCH), our local health practitioners who provide community-based NHS and social care in Norfolk and Waveney.

We have a partnership with ECCH and together we flag up anyone directed to us for rehab or GP referral who requires further support. Changing Lives isn’t proactively advertised. Highlighted cases are submitted to senior management, who in turn present them as anonymised case studies to the board for consideration.

Changing Lives offers something above and beyond the usual routes people might take. It’s for people who really need extra support on a weekly basis, with tailored programmes and targeted goals for their specific conditions and needs.

Our latest participant has successfully battled cancer, but the treatment left her severely immobilised and in a poor state of health. We’re now supporting her with free personal training and aqua cycling in the pool, so there’s less impact on her joints and bones. Our mission is to keep her out of a wheelchair.

But even if people don’t get on to Changing Lives, we deliver an exit route so they don’t just drop off at the end of a 12-week ECCH-referred course. It might be a discounted gym membership, for example, or free personal training for 12 weeks – some form of phased route towards mainstream exercise.

What other projects do you have on the horizon?
We’re about to launch a wellness app and website that will enable our specialists and our partners, ECCH, to assess lifestyle trends among the population; not everyone needs physical activity support – some people might need dietary advice, sleeping or stress support.

We hope it will help us better understand individuals’ lifestyles, so we can give them realistic goals to improve their health. In addition, it will allow us to look at whole towns and districts as blocks of data, so we can focus resources with the local health providers to hit the specific needs of each community.

In addition, the app is about educating people to set their own goals, and to get used to doing this, but at their own pace. People are then rewarded for reaching their goals – maybe with a free swim session or some free personal training.

And you also have a consultancy arm?
Yes. We’re a local trust and we aren’t seeking to expand further geographically, but we are able to go out and support other councils in setting up their own local trusts. Equally, we can advise other trusts who might want to re-create our commercial model to help ensure their own leisure offering is sustainable.

We already have a number of contracts around the UK. It’s nice to see that something we’re doing locally, successfully, will help centres in other counties as well. It’s something we feel passionate about.