We’re fortunate because the council sees leisure as the jewel in its crown and is very supportive

What have you been up to?
We’ve had a rebrand from Mid Devon Leisure to Active Mid Devon; embarked on a digital transformation, upgrading 14-year-old software and carried out refurbishments at all our leisure centres.

In addition, we’ve done a social value report and decarbonised, so our energy is now from renewables.

We’ve launched programmes to target different user groups; achieved our highest ever membership base and highest ever participation levels and still reduced the local authority subsidy by £543k.

Where do you operate?
We’re part of Mid Devon District Council, with centres in Tiverton, Crediton and Cullompton. Tiverton is the flagship, with the biggest membership base and Cullompton is the most challenging. It’s an older building following the dual-use operating model of the 80s, whereby the school uses the sports hall and one of the three pitches during the day, which limits what we can do at the site.

The general demographic sits in the middle quartile – not overly affluent and not in the lower area of deprivation. We're rural, so people will drive 20 minutes to our facilities and when we were closed for refurbishments they were even driving up to 40 minutes to the next site.

What cuts are you facing?
We’re fortunate because the council sees leisure as the jewel in its crown and is very supportive of us and proud of the facilities and services on offer.

We overachieved on our cuts last year – reducing full year costs by £543k, as mentioned. However, following this success, the council is keen to see what else can be done to reduce the subsidy further.

The building blocks have been put in place and the team is excited to see what further improvements can be made. The authority has been really fortunate in getting generous grant funding for energy-saving initiatives, allowing us to install ground and air source heat pumps; combined heat and power and solar power and now we’ve started battery storage, as we weren’t using all the solar power. We've swallowed the initial cost and are starting to see the benefit.

We also switched from chlorine to salt in the pools, which reduces our chemical use and our carbon footprint because we require less deliveries and it’s had great feedback from end users.

How else have you enhanced the finances?
A restructure has reduced staffing costs and a remodel of the membership pricing has led to the biggest ever membership levels, which are still growing.

Last summer we ran a family membership of £50 for six weeks for a family of four and that really spiked the income, so we're doing that again this year at the slightly higher rate of £60.

Our new app will hopefully also encourage people to use the centres more, allowing them to book easily, show usage history and give push notifications and with new access controls coming shortly, the arrival experience will be better, quicker and easier than ever.

Why did you take the decision to rebrand?
There was no real identity to Mid Devon Leisure and nobody knew what it represented. As we’d started the digital transformation, with a new app – and a website rebuild – it felt like perfect timing.

Our new vision is to help people feel happier and healthier. The logo represents the outline of Mid Devon, with a heart at the centre.

What have the refurbishments involved?
In line with the rebrand, all our reception areas have been refreshed. They were cluttered and dated and now they look clean and inviting.
We've also refurbished the changing areas at the Crediton and Tiverton centres, while Tiverton has new flooring around the pool which helps older members.

Cullompton had a gym refurbishment and a squash court has been upgraded into a functional studio that looks really modern. It's black, with LED immersive lighting and a sled track down the middle.

What are you doing to engage harder to reach people?
We’re introducing a free programme offering seated exercises in the libraries, hitting the demographic of those who need to be active, but possibly don't know they need to be active – or they don’t see the gym as a place for them, so we’re taking exercise to them.

Every six months we do an employer wellbeing programme, where we visit the Mid Devon District Council offices offering cholesterol and blood pressure checks. It’s been really popular and we’re now talking to Devon libraries about providing the same service for the general public.

It helps us to get our brand out, overcomes the stigma of the gym, has given some people the push to change their habits and gained us a few members.

We also launched wellbeing walks at the start of July. This volunteer-led scheme offers free walks with a social aspect and are designed to get people who are totally inactive a little bit more active, however, there’s no goal of turning them into members.

The walks start and finish at the leisure centres and there will be some starting at our libraries. The standard walk is 45 minutes, but we’ll do some longer and shorter ones, so they’re fully inclusive.

We've just launched the Carers Scheme offering free memberships for unpaid carers under the age of 18. We're working with Devon Carers and other care providers to form a social hub for this cohort.

Unpaid adult carers have a 25 per cent discount on a membership, and we're looking to do social sessions for them, whereby we provide coffee or tea and the chance to meet others in the same situation.

We offer a care leavers’ scheme, so people who’ve been in care up to age 25 get free use of the facilities.

What was the result of the social value report?
It came back as £4.9m in the last year, which puts us in the top 25 per cent of public sector operators. It’s another way for us to show the council the benefit of the investment they make in physical activity and leisure.

We also have a module within our leisure management system, through 4Global, to access social value data at the drop of a hat.

Tell us about your plans
More use of AI – for example, assisted lifeguard technology. We’ve also got a business case ongoing for AI integration into the app to respond to customers messages.

We’ve just met with the NHS about using space within our Tiverton site to run one of its rehab programmes, so people become more comfortable with the environment and can start to integrate better into the gym, pool and other facilities. We already run a very popular GP referral programme.

We're also planning to convert some tennis courts into Padel courts and investing in pool inflatables.

One of our targets is to grow our junior membership base, so we’re looking at how we can improve that offering, while also working with Parkrun to launch three junior Parkruns in response to demand.

How do you feel about the future?
It's exciting because there's still so much more that can be done. People like Kelly Lee, who has led on the community initiatives and Haley Walker, our service delivery manager, who has overseen the digital transformation have proven that so much can be achieved. A lot of good work has already happened, which indicates we can do more.

The biggest challenge facing us is devolution and local government reorganisation, because in three years’ time the landscape could look quite different. Mid Devon will become part of a much larger authority covering a much bigger geographical area – which is why we wanted to get our leisure services into as strong a position as possible before all these changes are implemented.