The effect of management types on the performance of English public sports centres

Abstract

There has been a change in the management of public sports centres in England, with significant numbers being transferred to non in-house operators. This paper analyses the consequences of this change, by evaluating the variation in public sports centre performance by different management types. It uses data on 260 sports centres that undertook the National Benchmarking Service, which has indicators on access to centres by different types of user, finance, utilization, and customer satisfaction. The results show that local authority in-house management achieved higher customer satisfaction but worse financial performance compared with commercial contractors and trusts. Trust management is positioned between in-house and commercial contract management in terms of service satisfaction. Therefore, the preferred operators for public sports centres depend on which performance dimensions are the priorities of local authorities.En los últimos años se ha producido en Inglaterra un cambio en las técnicas de gestión de los polideportivos públicos, con la decisión de externalizar los servicios a operadores privados en un número creciente de dichos centros. Este artículo analiza las consecuencias de estos cambios. El artículo evalúa las cuentas de resultados de polideportivos públicos que han seguido distintos métodos de gestión. Se usan para ello datos de 260 polideportivos recogidos por el Servicio Nacional de Calidad, que incluyen indicadores sobre los tipos de usuarios que acceden a los polideportivos, la situación económica de los centros, el nivel de uso de los polideportivos y la satisfacción de los usuarios con su experiencia en los centros deportivos. Los resultados indican que aquellos polideportivos que aún son gestionados por las autoridades públicas locales obtienen un mayor nivel de satisfacción de los usuarios, pero sin embargo presentan un peor rendimiento financiero comparados con los centros cuya gestión es mixta o ha sido externalizada. El modelo de gestión mixta a través de fundaciones o empresas públicas se sitúa a medio camino en niveles de satisfacción del usuario, entre los centros de gestión pública y los externalizados. Por lo tanto, la conclusión de nuestro estudio es que la decisión sobre el modelo de gestión a elegir dependerá en qué tipo de rendimiento (financiero o satisfacción) prefieran centrarse las autoridades públicas locales.Palabras clave: Servicio Nacional de Calidad; indicadores de rendimiento; fundaciones; empresas públicas; contratas privadas de servicios públicos; gestión pública de servicios; satisfacción del cliente 英國公立運動中心在大量的非內部經營者加入下，管理方式有了改變。本文旨在

Perspective of Local Government on the Performance Assessment of District Sports and Leisure Centers

“…Liu et al [28] utilized the output-oriented DEA, including operating expenditure, operating hours, and space as three inputs, and revenue and number of participants as two outputs, to assess the operating performances of sport facilities and swimming pools in the UK's National Benchmark Service database. Kung and Taylor [5] also used operational data of sports facilities from the UK's National Benchmarking Service, indicating empirical results in which customer satisfaction is higher for SLCs managed by the government; however, the financial performance of government-owned SLCs is lower compared to SLCs managed by private companies.…”

“…Hence, how to benchmark success for sports and leisure centers (SLCs) is also one of the most important empirical topics from the commercial enterprise and government perspectives. Kung and Taylor [5] documented that over 60% of local authorities' leisure department net expenditures in the United Kingdom go to indoor sports facilities. They indicated that indoor sports facility investment is mandatory.…”

“…However, in terms of performance assessment of SLCs, these studies suggested that maximization of outputs or the output-oriented DEA model is more appropriate [5,29]. Hence, this paper develops the output surplus target ratio (OSTR), defined as the ratio of the target output, as also estimated by the DEA, to the actual output.…”

The influence of voluntary sports clubs on the management of community sports facilities in Denmark

“…NBS and CERM-PI) and conducting research based on these has led to an evolution in research on indicators and the technical operations of sports facilities. For example, in the UK, the NBS has been used to examine the operational efficiency of sports facilities (Liu et al 2007), the influence of ownership (Kung and Taylor 2010), the influence of quality awards for sports facility performance (Ramchandani and Taylor 2011) and sports facility performance in times of austerities (Ramchandani et al 2018). In addition, NBS data has been used to investigate customer satisfaction in sports facilities (Liu et al 2009).…”

Providing Public Sport Facilities in Post-Socialist Times: The Case of the Czech Republic

“…The unified concept of the sport movement determined the future direction of facilities development, with a privileged position of organized sport (Sekot, 2010;Špaček, 2011). Thus, while the development of sport facilities in the 1960s and 1970s was associated with decentralization and depoliticization of public administration within Scandinavian countries or the United Kingdom (Rafoss & Troelsen, 2010;Kung & Taylor, 2010), sport facilities in the current territory of the Czech Republic arose from central planning during the same period.…”