Articles Tagged with: local government reorganisation

LGR is a Once-in-a-Generation Reset for Leisure, Health, Culture and Sport

LGR is a Once-in-a-Generation Reset for Leisure, Health, Culture and Sporting Infrastructure

James Foley, Commercial Director

Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) is often framed as a structural exercise; changing boundaries, simplifying governance and consolidating services. But for those of us working across leisure, health, culture and place, it represents something far more significant. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink the community infrastructure that supports people’s everyday lives.

The Government has been explicit that LGR is intended to simplify local structures, improve accountability and support better service delivery, particularly in areas where responsibilities are currently split across two-tier arrangements. It’s an ambitious challenge, but also a real opportunity to create places that work better for communities – recognising this is no easy ask or task!

A Moment to Rethink

For leisure, health and wellbeing, culture and sporting infrastructure, this matters enormously. Because, when new unitary authorities are formed, they do not inherit a blank sheet of paper. They inherit a mix of facilities built at different times, managed in different ways and shaped by varying levels of investment.

LGR brings those fragmented estates into a single conversation for the first time. That is not simply an operational challenge. It is an opportunity to take a fresh look at what communities need and how services can best support them with provision across a wider area, shaped around place, prevention and long-term prosperity.

Instead of asking how to sustain every existing building in its current form, authorities can ask more fundamental questions: what outcomes are we trying to achieve across this new geography? Which assets are fit for purpose? Where are the gaps in provision? How can leisure, culture and sport work alongside health, regeneration and education to deliver wider public value? That strategic shift is exactly the kind of whole-place thinking the devolution agenda is designed to encourage.

Managing Disruption Without Losing Momentum

Of course, there is no point pretending transition can occur without short-term disruption. Decision-making requires time to embed as new governance structures change. Internal capacity is often stretched as authorities focus on transition as well as delivery. But the real risk is not just LGR itself – it is inertia.

The most effective authorities are already using this period to reassess and refine their approach to place. Some projects will need to evolve to reflect larger catchments or more integrated service models. Others may need to be reprioritised against emerging evidence of need. That is a positive process. The key is to keep moving forward so communities see the benefits sooner. Authorities that keep planning and refining projects during the transition will be ready to deliver quickly when new structures are in place.

The Case for Investment Becomes Stronger, Not Weaker

Councils remain the largest public funders of sport, leisure, culture and health related services in the UK and are responsible for thousands of facilities and assets that communities rely on every day:

Health and Wellbeing: Modern ‘leisure’ facilities play a critical role in prevention, physical activity and reducing pressure on health services.

Economic Vitality: Cultural and leisure anchors drive footfall, support town centres and create viable, vibrant places.

Social Cohesion: Shared community spaces help bring together newly merged populations and build a sense of identity.

The sector’s value is increasingly understood not only in terms of activity levels, but in terms of prevention, social prescribing, reducing inequalities and supporting wider public service outcomes. Larger, unitary authorities will face increased expectations and well-planned investment in leisure, sport, health and cultural facilities, services and programmes are essential to delivering wider public value.

Balancing Scale with Local Identity

One of the defining challenges of LGR is finding the right balance between efficiency and local responsiveness. Rationalisation is inevitable. Larger authorities will look to standardise where it makes sense. On the other hand, communities do not suddenly become uniform because governance boundaries change.

Needs and expectations will continue to vary significantly across urban, rural and coastal settings. Successful strategies will recognise this, often through hub-and-spoke models or tiered provision that combines strategic consistency with local relevance. The best outcomes will come from authorities that embrace scale without losing sight of place. Done well, LGR allows authorities to create a coherent ‘estate’ without losing the character and relevance that drive local engagement.

Data and Evidence will Increasingly Drive Decisions

LGR will bring more comparison across assets, so decisions will need stronger evidence. Councils will need a clear picture of building condition, lifecycle cost, participation trends, catchment demand, demographic need, accessibility, energy performance and financial sustainability. They will also want to see how facilities support wider goals such as better health, regeneration and community impact.

Tools like Active Places and Moving Communities already help councils and operators understand demand, benchmark provision and show impact. With larger areas and more stakeholders involved, this insight, backed by specialist expertise, will become even more valuable.

Within our projects our Insight and Engagement team have seen an increasing demand for stakeholder engagement and consultation with local communities, and it is this local insight which will help steer the future needs of leisure, culture and sporting facilities.

Delivery Models that Keep Pace

This also increases the importance of development partnerships and outcome-led approaches.

Authorities will be looking for partners who can help build business cases, secure funding, manage risk and connect investment to strategic goals. Strong partnerships help turn ambition into practical, deliverable programmes as we are already doing with many of our local authority partners.

Efficient procurement and delivery models become even more essential in helping authorities keep projects moving and build confidence during change.

Frameworks such as the UK Leisure Framework, alongside strong partnerships, can provide a level of certainty and pace that is difficult to achieve through traditional methods alone. The authorities that succeed will be those that continue to align strategic ambition with a clear, deliverable route to market, ensuring that plans translate into visible outcomes.

Integration is No Longer Optional

One of the most positive implications of LGR is the huge opportunity and in many cases, the necessity, for greater integration. ’Leisure’ can no longer sit in isolation from public health.

‘Culture’ cannot be disconnected from regeneration. Community services and wellbeing must all align more closely with infrastructure planning. Unitary structures can create the conditions for this to happen, allowing for joined-up strategies, co-located services and shared assets that deliver multiple outcomes from a single investment. For leisure and culture, this strengthens their position, embedding them more firmly within the core mission of the authority.

LGR Creates a Window of Opportunity for Those Gaining the Early-Mover Advantage

Perhaps the most immediate challenge authorities face is the transition period itself while structures bed in and strategies are rewritten. This is inevitable and presents both opportunity and risk. Those that move early will be in a stronger position to secure funding, show progress and build trust with residents and stakeholders. Most importantly, they can turn reorganisation into real benefits for local communities. From a delivery perspective, clarity and confidence in pipeline planning will be critical. Experienced partners and proven delivery routes can help authorities move from strategy to action with confidence.

LGR is a chance for a fresh start. For leisure, health, culture and sport, it creates an opportunity to align investment with local priorities and build places that are healthier, better connected and ready for the future. The authorities that recognise that and act on it, will set the pace for the next decade.

If you would like to explore this further or discuss how Alliance Leisure can support your LGR journey, please email James at James@allianceleisure.co.uk or speak to another member of the team.

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What ProcureX Told Us About Where Procurement is Heading

John Leaver, Marketing & Frameworks Director

I spent some time at ProcureX recently, and what struck me most wasn’t any single keynote or supplier pitch, but the consistency of the conversation across the whole event.

Look across the agenda, the panels, even the conversations on the stands, and you start to see a very clear direction of travel. Procurement isn’t being talked about as a buying function anymore. It’s being repositioned as a strategic tool to deliver outcomes.

There were five themes that kept coming up again and again.

The first is the Procurement Act and wider reform.
There’s still a lot of focus on what has changed since the new regime came into force and, perhaps more importantly, what hasn’t. The interesting shift is less about compliance mechanics and more about behaviour. Procurement teams are being challenged to move quicker, engage earlier and think more strategically. The language is moving from “did we follow the process?” to “did we achieve the outcome?” That sounds simple, but it fundamentally changes how markets are engaged and how suppliers are evaluated.

Social value and community impact is the strongest thread running through everything.
It’s no longer a bolt-on or a scoring line in a tender. It’s becoming the lens through which projects are judged. The recurring question wasn’t “what’s the cheapest option?” but “what difference will this make locally?” Whether that’s local jobs, healthier communities or wider regeneration, the expectation is that procurement should actively contribute to place. That’s a big shift, and one that feels particularly relevant to the work we do.

AI and digital procurement is clearly accelerating, but in a practical way.
There was plenty of talk about AI, but not in a futuristic sense. The focus is much more grounded. How do we reduce admin? How do we analyse suppliers more effectively? How do we identify risk earlier? It feels like procurement is moving away from being document-heavy and towards being intelligence-led. The tools are there, but the conversation has now moved to how they are actually embedded into day-to-day workflows.

Value for money has evolved into something much more outcome-led.
Given the financial pressures across the public sector, that’s not surprising. What is changing is how value is defined. It’s less about lowest cost and more about what return is delivered over time. Whole-life cost, performance of assets, and preventative investment are all coming into sharper focus. In reality, it’s a recognition that cheap decisions often become expensive ones later on. You can read a little more about our views on affordability here.

And finally, collaboration.
There’s a noticeable shift away from the traditional, linear procurement model towards something more joined-up. Early engagement, co-design and longer-term partnerships were all common themes (and in a shameless plug, something the UK Leisure Framework is build upon). The idea that better outcomes come from working with the market, rather than simply testing it through competition, feels like it’s gaining real traction.

What This Means in Practical Terms

If I had to summarise the whole event in one line, it would be this:

Procurement is moving away from buying things cheaply and compliantly, towards delivering measurable public value.

That has a few immediate implications. Social value isn’t going away; if anything, it’s becoming more central. Digital tools will continue to reshape how procurement teams operate. And outcome-based thinking will increasingly drive decision-making.

For Alliance Leisure, that’s an encouraging place to be. Regeneration, community wellbeing and long-term partnerships have always been at the heart of what we do. In many ways, the procurement conversation is starting to catch up with the language our sector has been using for years.

And that alignment matters. Because if procurement is the route in, then those priorities will increasingly shape what gets delivered on the ground.

And Finally

At the end of a long day in Liverpool at the ProcureX conference, I joined colleagues from Denbighshire Leisure to celebrate at the GO awards. Whilst we didn’t bring home any trophies we were thrilled to be finalists in the Supplier of the Year and Collaborative Procurement Initiative categories.