Avalon LeisureWelcome to our ‘What’s your big idea?’ report for 2012!

As you may remember, last November we launched the first ever ‘What’s your big idea?’ cam-paign at our leisure centres in Wells, Frome and Street. The purpose of the campaign was to actively encourage you, our customers, to suggest changes you would like to make to the services we provide. In essence, we wanted to give you the opportunity to shape the future of Avalon Leisure by giving us your ideas, no matter how big or small!

We were genuinely overwhelmed by the response we received and it was fantastic that more than 300 of your ‘big ideas’ came rolling into us!

Having spent the past few weeks going through each and every one of your entries alongside our Marketing and Media Manager Brendon Mitchell, we’ve now produced this extensive report, which aims to respond directly to the most prominent and frequently occurring themes we came across.

Although we’ve not responded to each idea individually, I want to assure you that we have read (and re-read!) every single entry we received. I can’t emphasise enough how important your feedback is to us as a company and only by working together is it possible to make our centres a place the whole community can really be proud of.

2012 Report

“Improve the changing room facilities at each of the centres.”

With each of our three leisure centres now more than 20 years old, we acknowledge that it is inevitable that certain aspects of our facilities are beginning to age.

Understanding this, we have in place an extensive business development plan which pays particular attention to future improve-ments and modifications to these facilities, some of which have already been carried out.

For example, Frome Leisure Centre has recently invested in new wash-basin units for the female changing rooms, with a view to re-peating this in the male changing rooms. We hope to carry out similar improvements at each of our centres in the coming months to provide you with the most comfortable environment possible.

Our team works tirelessly to ensure that the changing facilities at each of the centres are in the best condition possible in terms of both maintenance and cleanliness; this is something we take very seriously. This is why we’re also pleased to announce that a new member of our technical team has recently been appointed, with one of the primary aims being to further improve this side of our service.

Rob TaylorManaging Director

Here’s how you rated us

As part of our ‘What’s your big idea?’ campaign, we also asked you all to rate your local centre out of 10. Here’s how we did...

Wells Leisure Centre

7.7 / 10Frome Leisure Centre

6.4 / 10Strode Swimming Pool & Fitness Centre

8.2 / 10

BIGWhat’s youridea?

“Install better hairdryers in the changing rooms at each of the centres.”

We have been aware for some time that a number of our current hairdryers would need replacing this year and we have been looking at alternatives.

We’re delighted to announce that in the spring we’ll be trialling a new variable temperature hairdryer at Strode Swimming Pool and Fitness Centre, with a view to rolling this model out across all of our sites if it proves popular with customers.

“Put more classes on during the day at Frome Leisure Centre.”

We, like you, would also love to see more day-time classes at Frome Leisure Centre!

As you may know, we actually share our facilities at Frome Leisure Centre with Frome Community College. This means that the only available area for daytime classes is the Bowls Hall; this significantly restricts us in terms of the number of classes we can provide, particularly during the winter months when the local bowling club is primarily occupying the hall.

Nonetheless, you can rest assured that we are already working in partnership with the college to ensure that all of the space avail-able to us is put to the best possible use and we’re currently looking into increasing the number of classes on offer for the summer.

“Introduce more exercise classes in the new studio at Strode Swimming Pool and Fitness Centre, particu-larly during the weekend.”

Since the new studio at Strode Swimming Pool and Fitness Centre launched last September, the team there has been working tire-lessly to add more exercise classes to the programme and utilise the space as effectively as possible. Following the opening of the studio last September, the number of classes available has already increased from 20 to 37!

The good news is that there has been some real progress on this front moving forward too, with some new Sunday exercise classes scheduled to start later in the Spring.

With many of our more popular exercise classes, such as Studio Cycling and Zumba, currently full to capacity, we’ve also been keen to add more of these sessions to the timetable in order to give everyone an opportunity to take part. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve just launched another new Studio Cycling class, which takes place every Monday between 8.00pm – 8.45pm.

With more new exercise classes to follow in the coming months, watch this space!

“Have more air conditioning units in each of the Fitness Suites.”

We do appreciate and understand your concerns in relation to the number of air conditioning units in these Suites, particularly dur-ing the summer months. We must stress, however, that we do always follow industry standard practices and the recommendations made to us by an external company who provide the units for us.

This external company makes a recommendation, in relation to the number and size of the air conditioning units, based on the size of the area they’re required to cover and their footprint. We carefully follow these recommendations to ensure the correct temperatures can be achieved and maintained at all times.

That said, we will continue to listen to customer comments to make sure you are also comfortable with these temperatures.

“Use a different radio station in the Fitness Suites”, “turn the volume up” and “turn the volume down.”

Music in the Fitness Suites has long been a topic of debate at not only our own centres, but at centres up and down the country.

Whilst we listen to every customer request we receive in regards to music selection and volume, there will always be a difference in taste and choice. For this reason, we will continue to monitor the situation and do everything within our power to please the majority, though it will be impossible to please everyone.

With more than 3,000 Lifestyle Members across our three sites, plus the thousands of users who ‘pay as you go’, there is sure to be a rather wide range of music preference!

“Allow Lifestyle Members to swipe their cards for entry to the Fitness Suite, without having to queue.”

In short, we agree that this is an excellent idea! We will be working with our IT department over the coming months to see if and

how we can make this happen and we hope we can provide the right solution.

“Introduce gentleman- and ladies-only sauna days and times.”

This is something we have trialled in the past at Wells Leisure Centre to a mixed reception.

Although we understand the argument for having such sessions available, many of our customers felt that this was restrictive and were unhappy that their usual routines became disrupted because they were no longer able to use this facility at their chosen time.

If there is over-whelming support for re-introducing these sessions we will review the situation but at this time this is not some-thing we are considering.

“Make more lane ropes available for serious swimmers during public swimming sessions.”

We understand that our pools attract swimmers with a wide range of abilities, many of whom share the water during our public swimming sessions. It’s important, therefore, that we do everything within our power to cater for all of these swimmers and we are constantly monitoring the situation at each of our sites. That said, we must emphasise that it is extremely difficult to find the right balance.

Just recently we have introduced extra lane ropes for competitive swimmers at Frome Leisure Centre, only to have some concerns expressed to us by non-competitive swimmers who feel their space is being too significantly reduced. This really does demonstrate the difficulties we face in trying to come up with the right formula.

In order to create more space and opportunity for the casual swimmers and families who use our centres, we would also like to remind our more competitive, able swimmers that we do put on a number of special lane sessions; these are available seven days per week at Strode Swimming Pool, five days per week at Wells Leisure Centre and three days per week at Frome Leisure Centre (Main Pool School Term Timetable, correct at January 31st 2012). Please pick up a copy of the latest Swimming Timetable from reception for more information.

“Have a 55 minute timer displayed on courts in the Sports Hall so groups don’t come in early.”

In theory, we do acknowledge that this is an excellent idea and it’s something we’ve discussed at length with the Centre Managers at each of our sites.

However, we do have some concerns about the logistics and management of these timers. Although we don’t completely rule out introducing these timers at a later date if there was significant demand for them, we remain unconvinced that they provide the best possible solution.

“Install solar panels on the roofs of each of the Centres to generate power.”

As a company, we are extremely proud of our sustainability efforts and we are very much driven towards becoming as environ-mentally friendly as we reasonably can be. Needless to say, the concept of using a natural source like the Sun to generate power is attractive to us and endorses our philosophies.

Unfortunately though, the practice of this idea doesn’t quite match the theory.

Avalon Leisure manages each of its three centres, as well as the Lido in Shepton Mallet, on behalf of Mendip District Council and in partnership with Western Community Leisure. The company doesn’t own the sites it manages and we have a contract with Mendip District Council which doesn’t run indefinitely.

The installation of solar panels is extremely costly and it takes many, many years to recover these costs through energy savings; at the current time, we couldn’t guarantee a return on such an investment.

However, this concept is in ours and Mendip District Council’s plans should it become a more viable option in the future.

“Make free WIFI (internet) available at each of the centres.”

With more than a quarter of adults in the United Kingdom now owning a smart phone (Ofcom, 2011), we understand how impor-tant it is for our customers to ‘stay in touch’. This is why we’ve actually already explored the possibility of making free WIFI available at Wells Leisure Centre in the past 12 months. There are, however, a number of reasons why this was ruled out.

Firstly, because of the current technology setup we have in place, we would need to get a brand new phone-line installed; this would be extremely costly.

Secondly, there are also certain security issues to consider within a leisure centre environment, particularly in terms of safe-guard-ing young children. Unfortunately, we would be unable to monitor what content customers were uploading and downloading via our internet connection and this could be problematic further down the line.

Although we acknowledge that making free WIFI available would enhance the leisure centre experience for our customers and looking towards the future we do anticipate that this practice is likely to become ‘the norm’, this is not something that is in our immediate plans.

“Introduce an annual parking permit for the car park at Strode Swimming Pool and Fitness Centre.”

We appreciate that the growth and success of Strode Swimming Pool and Fitness Centre over the past 12 months has put a real pressure on our relatively limited car parking facilities. Whilst we acknowledge that introducing a car parking permit for our cus-tomers would be an ideal scenario, we feel that the root of the problem is the lack of car parking space we’re able to offer.

At this moment in time we simply don’t have a solution to this problem, but we are continuing to work alongside Mendip District Council to provide extra parking and ease the strain the centre is currently facing. We thank you for raising the issue and it’s impor-tant to us that you know that this is a priority of ours moving forwards.

In relation to our other centres in Wells and Frome, we also realise that car parking is an issue there at times too. Again, we’re continuing to work with the Council to try to find a solution to the problem.

“Provide more water fountains at Frome Leisure Centre.”

We certainly agree that the cold water provision at Frome Leisure Centre could be improved and we are now looking into making this happen. We anticipate that an additional water fountain will be available at the centre in time for the warmer summer months!

Avalon Leisure manage Wells Leisure Centre, From Leisure Centre and Strode Swimming Pool and Fitness Centre on behalf of Western

Community Leisure in partnership with Mendip District Council.

Thank you for your big ideas!

We hope you’ll agree that this process has been a productive one and it’s important that we stress, once again, that although this report only responds to a selection of your ideas, we have read and reviewed every single entry we received.

Although you’ll have an opportunity to send more of your big ideas to us in November 2012, when we’ll be running this campaign for a second time, we would like to remind you that you can send us your feedback, comments and suggestions at any time. You can do this by giving a verbal comment to one of our receptionists, by filling out a ‘Customer Suggestion Form’ at any of our centres or by using the ‘Contact’ facility on our website at www.avalonleisure.co.uk.

Our Management Team is always available and happy to listen to what you have to say. Your feedback will frame our future man-agement decisions.