The performance of local authority sports halls and swimming pools in England

This paper reports on the results of a project from Sport England, which establishes performance indicators and national benchmarks for performance by local authority sports halls and swimming pools in England. These results act as a stark contrast to the limited representation of sports centres' performance in the UK government's main policy for local government "Best Value'. The project uses an array of performance dimensions, covering access to centres by different user groups, the extent of utilization of facilities and financial performance. The results are structured by three "families' of centres representing major influences on performance: type of centre; location of centre and size of centre. They demonstrate the validity and value of an extensive measurement of performance, even for such a specific service as sports centres.