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Published on: Monday 20th June 2011

More visits than ever before...

KAL had more than 2.2 million visits during the last financial year - our best year yet!

That means that we really are getting more people, more active, more often!

KAL reported another very successful year for 2010-11, with more than 2.2 million visits across its eleven sports centres, a massive 8.6% increase on the number of visits the previous year.

Of these, 227,000 (10% of the total) were new customer visits. The figures from KAL’s year end report also revealed a 50% increase in the number of visits from the over 60s.

KAL’s Chief Executive Alasdair Brown reported these statistics along with a string of other positive results for this year’s performance at a series of staff roadshows in May.

He told staff: “It’s really fantastic and everybody here has played a big part in that very positive outcome. The increase in new customers is very impressive, especially given the difficult economic situation facing the local area.”

Results of a customer satisfaction survey carried out across all KAL’s centres in April also yielded very positive results. More than a thousand customers completed the survey, which revealed:

• A whopping 86.3% are happy with KAL staff
• 79.4% of customers were satisfied overall with KAL
• More customers feel they get value for money, rising from 76.1% the previous year to 79.6%
• Satisfaction with the KAL website and e-newsletter improved significantly on last year
• 81% of customers feel environmental issues relating to our centres are important
• 53% of customers use KAL centres mainly for health reasons
• 76% of members would recommend the membership to a friend
  • From our new health & wellbeing indicators, customers fed back that by using KAL facilities:
    • 83% felt healthier
    • 74% felt more confident
    • 78% felt happier
    • 79% had an improved quality of life
    • 67% met friends regularly at their local centre
    • 71% felt a sense of community in their local centres

Business Improvement Manager Joe Baker, who collated the research, said: “This is another great set of results. We’ve maintained high standards for three years now, which is especially good this year given the timing of the survey.”

But KAL will not become complacent about the survey results. They will be analysing them in more detail and putting together action plans for each centre to make any potential improvements.

And there was more good news!

• The number of staff sick days fell during this financial year by an average of more than two days per employee and is now well below the average for the public and not for profit sectors.
• Over the past year, KAL has employed 83 people on the Future Jobs Fund, to help young people out of work gain experience in the workplace. A total of 34 of these went on to be employed in some capacity with KAL, which was 61.5% of those on the scheme.
• Carbon emissions from the centres have continued to drop, this year by approximately 3% which was particularly impressive considering that the previous year they had already dropped by a massive 12.5%, and given the extremely cold December 2010.
•  Our KAL website, which was launched just over a year ago, has already had ¼ million visits and gets about 30,000 hits each month.
•  There was an increase of 4.6% in swimming lesson customers.
•  The number of people regularly attending KAL’s activity classes has gone through the roof, with many classes such as Zumba, Aqua Zumba, BodyCombat and Retrostep at Colne Valley Leisure Centre fully booked up with waiting lists.
•  KAL’s gym membership scheme, which gives people access to fitness suites, classes, swimming and saunas across the centres, had just over 11,000 members at the beginning of June, an increase of 64% over the last four years from 6,800.
•  KAL, an independent charitable trust, finished the year with a reasonable surplus which will be reinvested back into the services provided to the people of Kirklees.
• Since KAL was set up as a trust in 2002, more than £18 million of capital funding has been invested by both Kirklees Council and KAL into improving the facilities offered to customers.
•  KAL was also awarded the Social Enterprise Mark earlier this year, which officially recognised the organisation’s contribution towards “people and planet”.
•  The current financial year is already set to be another successful one for KAL. More than 13,000 people have already signed up to the KAL Card, which gives a range of benefits to customers including discounted prices and booking advantages; this initiative was only launched in April 2011. The Card will benefit the organisation in giving vital information to help inform future activity programming and help ensure that KAL provides what the customer wants.

Alasdair added: “We are delighted that our customers value our centres and our staff so highly and are clearly becoming more active.

“It is vital that KAL stays strong financially as we face considerable budgetary pressure over the next few years but we are also committed to our social objectives to continue to encourage the general public and hard to reach groups into making exercise a priority in their lives.

“I would like to thank all our wonderful staff for working so hard during these tough times and also our customers for supporting us and choosing to stay fit and healthy in their local leisure centres.”