CHIEF EXECUTIVE JO CHERRETT

Dear All,

Another newsletter addition, and more fantastic updates and celebrations I honestly don’t know where this year is going, how can we be in the middle of July! I hope you have all managed to have some kind of break as we approach the halfway point of the year and that you are making the most of your time off when it happens. I am pleased to advise for the first time in our newsletter that we are officially a ‘Real Living Wage Employer’, I am always proud of our people, what we have achieved and what we continue to strive for but taking this step is a significant achievement and I am so proud of us being able to do this. Talking of achievements, a massive thank you and well done for our financial year end results for 22/23. As you will see from the update in the newsletter, you were part of the result that saw us overachieve our budget by £670K!! We know that this wasn’t easy on people at times, with vacancy levels last year around 30% - this result is fantastic and helped support the step in becoming Real Living Wage this year. A few key updates from me are as follows...

Investment Plans

The investment plans are progressing well, and you would have seen last month that Trafford Council have formerly appointed Kier as the construction company for move Altrincham. Rest assured, work has been busily taking place at Altrincham since it closed in December, the building has been stripped out, testing and assessments taking place that can only be done once closed and infrastructure being put in place specifically on the roof to aid the investment going in to de-carbonise the centre. Milestone 3 on our Altrincham Road Map is a good read if you haven’t already digested: https://twmove.co.uk/move-altrincham-staff-updates/ move Stretford continues to excite Fran and I, and the team working on this centre design and plan. The centre will accommodate an English Cricket Board Urban Cricket centre and UA92 will be an integral partner post refurb and having the chance to re-think design in breakout areas, café space sporting facilities, equipment, and training requirements for all three organisations is great to do so early in this stage. If you’re not quite sure what an Urban Cricket centre is, have a look at this link highlighting the Leyton Centre https://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12123/11750644/urban-cricket-centre-opens-in-leyton-as-part-of-ecbs-south-asian-action-plan

Next key milestone for Stretford, is an exec report and key decision in October on final business plan which if approved will mean no further approvals required ahead of construction starting – which would be when Altrincham reopens!!

Talking of UA92 I also went to the launch of their new performance centre at UA92 last month, and we have also entered into a unique partnership for the next 12 months which will see UA92 design our fitness customers first 12-week journey with Trafford Leisure.

Partington consultation is now complete and being reviewed to formalise the brief for the refurbished leisure centre that will need to be completed at some point before the end of 2025! Thanks to great work by the local school Broadoak we have a strong voice coming through from young people which is particularly great.

People

Trafford Leisure are currently recruiting for an IT Manager, and this is a significant step for us in our continued digital and IT Journey. Not only is it a desirable for us to be digitally enabled, our customers and staff are driving the change and with that comes increasing expectations around how simple and easy to use our IT systems are. The scale of IT and Digital in the business means we are at the natural point to take this step in bringing in this expertise and added resource and over the coming months I look forward to sharing more with you on both the individual appointed and the role itself.

Once this position is in place, we will also be recruiting a systems trainer. Our business is open for 14 hours per day and 7 days per week and we know that we need more support and resource to help you and everyone with the systems we have installed in recent years. We want every centre to have the access they need and “super users /champions” for systems at each site, we don’t want our customers to be redirected from centre or from the customer hub and we can’t achieve this without investment in people. We are hearing you loud and clear on some of the systems we have in place and lack of training / support to help you be the best version of yourself in front or with customers. Trafford Leisure wants to provide on the job training and support for where it is needed with Gladstone 360, Office 365 and other tools that should make your life easier but can’t until we invest more in supporting our people with training and useful “how to guides”.

Our first DIGITAL BOT

Thanks to the leadership, dedication and on the job learning that was needed from Carly Heselwood, our Health and Wellbeing Manager, Trafford Leisure has our very first BOT in place and first in GM Active! To those who ask “what is a BOT” - a bot is an automated software application that performs repetitive tasks over a network. So instead of our health and fitness colleagues having to manually input information from one system to another via an e-mail, (which no-one enjoyed or wanted to do) our first BOT imitates the human behaviour, it is faster and more accurate and runs independently without human intervention. It is very very early days, and I’ll ask Carly to share more on this and the referral programme in our next addition. We also need a name for our first BOT – one for you Carly!

Pedal power – (see page 18)

Well done to those who took part on the first challenge, the team finished 40th out of 265 in the UK. The next challenge is September, I am going to get my bike out and I am calling on others to do the same. Can we improve on our position?

SAVE the DATE – only next week now!

So, finally I hope to see as many of you as possible for our family BBQ at the end of the month – Saturday 29th July. Please do make sure you confirm your place, use the QR code – so we can ensure we have the right amount of food for everyone.