Repair or renewal?

We are now well into our lockdown and it is clear that most people across the sector are responding positively to the new challenges. The call for financial support for the sector has been heeded although financial cash flow problems remain serious and I’m sure some in the sector have or will lose their jobs and livelihoods over coming weeks. Sport England and the Arts Council have responded with packages of support to keep the sector afloat and many leisure-based organisations have redirected their staff to support other public services and community activity. We have all been really motivated by the governments focus on physical activity and see this as real hope for the future as we want the sector be valued differently when this is all over? We know the sector can be really good in these situations and is once again rising to the challenge. More importantly however I am really encouraged by how many are now starting to think about the future and how we exit from the situation we will find ourselves in. 

In a recent Zoom conference organised by Duncan Wood-Allum I was most struck by John Oxley’s comment about uncertainty. His point was that at the moment we all face uncertainty which makes any planning difficult if not impossible. He is right but I was reminded at the time by one view I read on leading change, namely that when the future is uncertain what good leaders do is create a vision for the future to replace the uncertainty so giving people a positive sense of direction and purpose. It does not matter if that vision turns out to be different because as uncertainty clears so we can refine the vision and adapt our actions accordingly. 

I think we are now at that moment where our leaders need to create that vision so that we can all work together towards something positive. Conscious of this view I recently suggested to a colleague from Sport England that perhaps now would be a very good time for them to launch their new strategy. It doesn’t matter that it is incomplete but even in a generic form it would give us a route out of this mess and give us all something to focus on. 

I have so far not jumped into writing about how we deal with the future because firstly I just don’t yet know what we should do and secondly, I think we need to understand better the social, economic and political context in which we will emerge. This context will be much more influenced by behaviours and values than anything else and currently it is far too early to read the mood music across the country. Currently fear is perhaps the strongest feeling for many of us. How do we keep our loved ones alive, fed and a roof over their heads? Those who have lost family, friends, businesses or their jobs are early in the bereavement curve and the sense of loss and foreboding is real and prevalent in many quarters. But this will end at some point and so I have been reading and thinking about how through history we have dealt with a crisis and looked for some of the most common human reactions. 

I think I see two main reactions. The first is the desire to quickly recreate what we had. “Let’s get our lives back together”. Look at how flood victims or storm victims respond, they just want to get back in their homes as quickly as possible. Safety is about being back to normal. Many of us and our staff will want the same. Get the club back open, get the leisure centre functioning again, get the fitness classes open. The desire and temptation to do this will be very high. The repair motive. However, it may be some time after reopening when we suddenly start to realise that things have changed and simply doing what we did is no longer really viable. Club volunteers no longer want to help to the same degree. People have found new things to do. People don’t yet have enough income to renew their membership or attend like they did. Although more people may now realise being active is good for them, they have found ways of doing it that are cheaper, and more family orientated, or it can in fact be done digitally at home where it is safe. Whilst the desired to become social again may be high the ongoing threat of the virus returning may mean some form of social distancing remains prevalent. Coming together in large groups in leisure centres, community centres and at events may still create fear particularly among older people still most vulnerable from infection. We then suddenly realise that the world we wanted back is actually no longer there. 

The second common response is “that was so horrible I don’t want to go back to where I was”. My perception is that after both world wars people wanted something better, something different which in turn created a whole series of economic, social and political changes. The modern equivalent may be that more people continue to work from home and rely on technology. People are already questioning whether we need HR2 and maybe the idea to give everyone free broadband was actually quite a good one after all. People may feel that their quality of life is now the most important thing and life returning to how it was is not the best thing to do at all. For the sector maybe everyone will suddenly realise that being physically active is essential to their life and demand free or cheap access to it. Maybe our increased dependency on volunteering and community activity we reignite our social and community values with less focus on the individual simply striving for assets, goods and more money. Clearly social attitudes will change but how?

But values and behaviours will not be the only driver of the future.

Undoubtedly the economy will have been hit hard by the actions the government have taken. Most observers are suggesting the world will face a recession and economic recovery could take a long time. This country will be no different. The money pumped in over this period will need to be repaid over a long period of time. Public expenditure will again need to wound back as it was after the banking crisis and many observers fear austerity will be back on the agenda. Unemployment is likely to rise and the need to financially support individuals and whole communities will continue for some time. For the parts of the sector that are income dependent this will mean a slow recovery. For those dependent on council funding I fear the impact could be far more significant particularly from next year when budgets are reset. In addition to total spending reductions, priorities will also probably change for both national and local government. Nationally there will be huge pressure to bolster the NHS to address the clear weaknesses that have been exposed. The social care problem will now have to be solved if the capacity of the acute sector is to be managed and all those deferred operations and treatments are re-planned. Welfare benefits will need to increase for some time as the concept of supporting people back into work needs to be put on hold until jobs reappear. Business support will be required to protect key industries for some time until domestic and world demand emerges again. And what about Brexit, will it get done?

At a local level in councils personal services and social services will need to expand. Family breakdowns, domestic abuse, homelessness and care demands will increase on social services and housing services. Demands will come to inflate public health budgets back to their original funding levels when it was transferred to councils. Business support will continue to be critical to replace jobs lost and so will be protecting the future of the high street, now even more under pressure. Funding for the whole sport and cultural sector will I fear come under enormous strain against these other priorities unless it can fundamentally position itself and show some real leadership. Our needs will not be a tier one or even a tier two problem for most councils, but our challenge will be demonstrating how we can contribute to solving those more pressing problems. 

One final observation on context that I think will hold true. I have regularly talked about the sector being in thirds. One third where the leadership and capability is strong will always adapt quickly and improve, one third always need to be encouraged to adapt and respond and a final third that always hide from the challenges of change. I suspect we now may see something similar happen. The strong and capable will already be thinking of the future and planning how they can come through this. Others will need help, support and encouragement if they are to survive. Whilst the rest but hopefully not a third, will simply not survive.

In summary I would suggest the key strategic drivers going forward will be behaviour change, both in the population at large and our own, the economic position, our resilience as a sector to adapt and lastly the degree to which our leaders can set out an interim vision of the future that in the short term will replace the uncertainty.

Within this wider context what other sector specific factors may influence our future?

If we are to capitalise on the message about physical activity much will depend on our future and ongoing relationships with our health colleagues. Our past relationships have been at best patchy. There is now emerging lots of really good examples of the sector working well with the health sector but our work on commissioning just a few years ago showed many health colleagues were quite sceptical about our motives, often accusing us of just chasing the money, being far too focused on making the active more active than the inactive active and not being really serious about working with those in greatest need in terms of addressing health inequality. Some will perhaps look at our perceived slowness to close down our facilities to enforce social distancing and worrying more about our lost income as an indicator that we are still not serious players in the health system. Others, however, will look at our great efforts to create new opportunities to keep people active and safe in the environment and at home and our support of community action at a time of need as a good indication that we are and should be valued partners going forward. Over the period of the crisis some existing relationships will have been greatly strengthened and some new ones created which over time must be built on as part of greater collaboration. 

But the health sector itself will face its own challenges. It is very likely that one response to the pandemic will be the expansion of the acute sector. Our limited bed capacity, testing ability and PPE shortages will all need to be addressed. The gradual desire to shift resources from acute to prevention could for the time being be reversed and investment in prevention may take a while to return. The publication of the Marmot 10-year review of health inequalities got lost in the media focus on Coronavirus but its conclusions were startling. The health inequalities in the UK had pretty much remained static and some aspects of life expectancy had actually got worse. Marmot was very clear that he believed that austerity had disproportionately affected poorer people more than the better off and that this had been the primary reason for gap in health inequalities not being narrowed as originally intended after his first report. It is therefore perhaps fair to say that the impact of any recession and public sector funding reductions will again have the same effect. 

If the sector therefore is to focus anywhere going forward it has to be where the need is greatest and where physical activity can have the biggest impact on health improvement and addressing health inequalities. In one of my previous articles I talk about the concept of “proportionate universalism” and how we should ensure everyone gets access to some physical activity but most support should go to those in the lowest socio-economic groups. I did last week applaud Sport England on their rescue funding but suggested now would be a very good time to distribute it in accordance with the proportionate universalism model, so making sure we first protect those organisations that work with the most deprived communities. This would be a great sign that we want to see change and want to do things differently, but I realise the temptation to distribute how we have always done it will be high. How this can be achieved where operators are already so income dependent and also facing difficult business recovery will not be easy but then if we can build a hospital in ten days perhaps, we can achieve the impossible with the right leadership.

One other area where we could really focus our attention will be mental health. Commentators are already pointing out the impact of what is happening on the mental health of everyone and specifically those most damaged by the outbreak. Support to individuals and communities will be needed if the longer-term impact is to be managed and here the sector could play a major role either under prescription or through its own developments. 

So is this moment when the sector has to finally decide if it is part of the leisure and entertainment business or part of the National Health Service. It can no longer try to be both.

It is clear already that different parts of the sector will emerge from the current crisis in different ways. 

Let’s briefly speculate about some of the threats and opportunities different parts of the sector might face over coming months.

Clubs

I suspect that clubs will in the main face short term disruption but in the main bounce back in a reasonable period of time. Most club members will I think remain loyal and return quickly continuing to pay their fees. There will be some drop off as personal income is constrained but in the main participation will gradually regrow to previous levels. Where clubs are dependent on other providers for space, costs could rise in the medium term and in some instance’s council decisions to not reopen facilities that cannot be sustained will hurt some clubs. Those relying on self-employed coaches may find they are all no longer available on the same terms and there may be a drop off in volunteering as older volunteers take longer before they feel safe. Unless others can see an alternative future, I suspect recovery will be short to medium return. 

Elite 

At the top end of club provision moving into the elite sector the situation may be more severe. Whilst the deferral of the Olympics should mean short term continuity of funding the slow reopening of training facilities and the gradual return of competitions and event could be problematical for some individuals and sports. Longer term I wonder if the government will be in a position to fund the next Olympic cycle to similar levels. Will sponsors be able to maintain their support for individual athletes and sports? Will the costs associated with training venues rise significantly? These and other questions will gradually emerge.

Operators

Facility operators will have I suspect a wide range of experiences. Private gyms and activity centres should bounce back in time although some providers may fail to survive because of cash flow so a reduced market may initially be spread across fewer providers. Re-introductory pricing and earlier reopening may also result in the redistribution of users to private facilities from council facilities if good customer retention arrangement have not been put into place. Given the customer profile in private gyms which I suspect is at the young, middle to high income end I would expect recovery will be short to medium term. 

Council providers we know is already a mixed market with a huge range of contracts and relationships. In the latest crisis we have seen many councils utilise their operator staff in community support functions. I am unclear yet whether councils with in house or local trust arrangements have found it easier to redeploy staff to other areas of service than where they have externalised to more distant providers. Perhaps people can tell me their experience. If so this ability to expand support capacity in a flexible way may make some councils think differently about their provider models going forward. 

We know that most operators are already working on narrow margins so financial survival for some will be a real challenge. In the short term I suspect local negotiations will do everything possible to enable facilities to reopen as soon as they are allowed. Short term negotiations will then enable ongoing contracts to be re-engineered for the emerging market, but this could mean changes to the services provided and even some closures. Longer term we may see more fundamental changes in the market as councils come to terms with both their finances and changing priorities. What is clear is that where relationships are strong solutions will be found. Where they are weak things could be much more difficult. Where they are strong, I would expect much deeper discussions to happen about purpose, roles, outcomes and attempts to collaborate across the system to redesign a place-based offer that is more sustainable. This may mean that less is more as people opt out of facilities and into more local and outdoor offers for activity. What I hope does not happen is a replication of our approach to austerity where the sector primarily focused on improving its efficiency but at the expense of our effectiveness. Whilst subsidy levels reduced this was often at the expense of those least able to pay. If we are to grasp the opportunity of the increased interest in physical activity, we must also be prepared to confront the issue of health inequality and refocus our efforts on those with the greatest needs. If we are able to position ourselves as central to addressing what the market fails to address, we may be seen as both valuable and important to the future. 

Community sport and activity.

It was the community part of the sector that has suffered most from austerity. Sports development has almost disappeared, been rolled up in facility contracts or been externalised into the charity sector. Community organisations providing to the most deprived communities will perhaps find recovery most difficult. Few will have significant reserves; personal earned income may be very slow returning but in some senses their agility to switch quickly to other social and economic support activity may actually open up new contracts and commissions. Donations and sponsorship may also be very slow coming back. So, the part of the sector that is perhaps closest to where the need will be greatest could be the first to again disappear just as it did in austerity. In the most progressive councils, they will already be looking at the place in the round and thinking in terms of a wider system change approach and already be thinking about how they can better engineer their operator and community functions so they can better address together these local priorities. 

All the above is at best just speculation but based on our previous experience through austerity, a reasonable proxy for what we could be facing. If observers are right about the economic context we could face, unless we change our behaviours there is every possibility the sector will simply follow the same or similar paths. 

However, if public opinion changes about what really matters this could force or enable very different political reactions and therefore very different policy making. We have already seen positive support for the public sector and those working in front line services in the private sector and our Prime Minster has already been heard to say that there is actually such a thing as community. Will these trends continue or when it’s all over will our politicians simply go back to their “normal”? The sector really needs to keep a close eye on these trends as understanding the changing context will need to both influence and dictate our response.

Above all what we need now is exceptional leadership throughout the sector. At times of emergency we tend to naturally revert to command and control leadership styles. That’s what works in these situations and the sector appears to have shown that it can respond quickly to a crisis. But now it is time to switch to collaborative leadership and think about how we work together across our local and national systems to take control and shape our own future. Over recent months I have written lots about collaborative leadership, system change, community engagement and even proportionate universalism. My first thoughts in the crisis were that now is not the time to remind the sector of this, but maybe it is. Maybe now is the exactly the right moment to reopen for business in a totally different way. Renewal rather than repair. In a way the embraces the new focus on health and activity but by focusing where we can make the biggest difference to those that will need us most.

Martyn Allison 5th April 2020