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

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.