Freedom Leisure, which manages K2 Crawley, is celebrating Crawley Borough Council's (CBC) short listing for the Public Private Partnership Achievement of the Year Award.

The Award is part of the Municipal Journal Local Government Achievement awards which were established to publicly recognise and promote achievement in local government services. Crawley Borough Council has been nominated for the award after putting forward a strong case study of which Freedom Leisure's K2 Crawley was an integral part.

Freedom Leisure and Greenwich Leisure Limited were awarded the contract to manage K2 Crawley in July 2008.

Since the take over in November that year the number of visitors to the Centre has risen from 590,000 to over 1.3 million and the number of high profile sporting events including the European Judo Championships, has significantly increased.

There has also been interest from Olympic and Paralympics committees, and in March 2010 the Barbados National Olympic Committee confirmed that they would be using K2 Crawley's facilities in the run up to the London 2012 Games and this year's Commonwealth Games. The Centre has also recently received a Quest score that puts them in the Excellence category.

The Private Partnership Award is to be judged on several factors including the way in which the Council's services benefits customers by levering in the resources and expertise of different partners. The judges will be looking for evidence of these benefits irrespective of the size or scope of the partnership. They can cover any service from education, health or social services to regeneration, so long as the focus is on output and not process.

Ivan Horsfall-Turner, Business Development Director for Freedom Leisure said: "The working relationship between Crawley Borough Council and Freedom Leisure has been positive since the contract was awarded. Post transfer, this relationship has continued to grow to the benefit of the local community with Freedom Leisure focusing on the programme development needs of the community and CBC, ensuring continued investment into the first class leisure provision within the borough."

The winner will be announced at the Awards ceremony taking place on Thursday 24 June at The Hilton, Park Lane, London.