Our multi award-winning Prehab4Cancer (P4C) Programme run in partnership with GM Cancer, has added another accolade to its growing list of achievements.
It has won the innovation award at this year’s UKactive Awards, the fourth time the programme has been recognised for its pioneering work following two wins at the Health Service Journal (HSJ) awards and the patients’ choice award at the inaugural GM Cancer Awards.
P4C is offered to patients with lung, bowel and oesophagus-gastric (often referred to as upper GI) cancers and enables them to engage in exercise, nutrition, and wellbeing assessments and interventions before, during and after their treatment.
It has supported more than 3,000 patients across Greater Manchester since its inception 2019 and has since expanded into areas of Cheshire.
The UKactive judges applauded P4C ‘for being both important and revolutionary in delivering prehabilitation and recovery programmes for those managing a cancer diagnosis’.
P4C programme leader Jack Murphy says: “A cancer diagnosis can have a massive impact on a person, and increasing physical activity levels while waiting for cancer treatment is often the last thing on a person’s mind. But with physical activity and our support, people can take a proactive role in their own care and have a positive impact their outcomes.As a result, they feel empowered to take back control of the diagnosis, whilst optimising their physical and mental condition to better cope with the rigours of cancer-related treatment. We can’t always control what life throws at us. However, we can control how prepared we are to face these life events and physical activity can be a key to this.”
Independent research that secured recurrent funding for the Greater Manchester scheme found that P4C hospital patients were able to be discharged home sooner and enjoyed a better recovery.
Headline results for colorectal patients included:
The shorter hospital stays ‘released’ 550 ward beds days and 146 critical care bed days, resulting in increased capacity and patient flow. Bed days ‘released’ from 1,000 colorectal prehab patients enables 179 additional patients to access timely surgery. Bed days ‘released’ per prehab patient cover the costs involved in setting up and delivering P4C for a year.
Patients experienced fewer post-operative complications and enjoyed a better recovery when assessed against four efficacy benchmarks: the commonly used six-minute walk test to measure aerobic capacity and endurance; the World Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS); the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) and the descriptive system for health-related quality of life, known as EQ5D.
Speaking after P4C won Best Not for Profit Working in Partnership with the NHS award from the Health Service Journal (HSJ), Dr John Moore, P4C’s clinical director of prehabilitation and recovery, said: “Prehab4Cancer is now seen as an exemplar for prehab, and how we do it.
“We work with colleagues in Northern Ireland, Scotland, the north of England, Canada, Australia, and America, all because of the work we have done in this part of the world. To be able to say we represent Greater Manchester on a UK and international footing is absolutely phenomenal.”
The strategy now is to extend the prehabilitation principle to more cancers, with a 10-year ambition to be treating up to 10,000 patients a year. This could grow the workforce up to 40 Level 3 exercise instructors and 40 Level 4 exercise specialists.
Prehab 4 Cancer is a co-designed transformation programme between GM Active and GM Cancer. What began as a test project in 2019 has now secured the recurrent funding to safeguard its future.
GM Active is a collective of 12 leisure and community organisations across Greater Manchester all sharing the same vision – to get more people physically active so they can live healthy, happy and longer lives. It is a not-for-profit community interest company (CIC), which manages the majority of publicly owned leisure and physical activity services on behalf of the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester.
You can read more about our P4C programme here.Change is not easy to achieve. It takes time, it takes patience, and, above all, it needs buy-in from those who will make the difference.
Those words very much sum up our Pivot to Active Wellbeing and its current status, writes Jon Keating, GM Active Head of Business Operations and Company Secretary.
If you’re late to the party, a quick synopsis: at the beginning of 2023 we began our Pivot to Active Wellbeing project across Greater Manchester, but in truth our ‘pivot’ began well before then.
Ultimately, the ‘pivot’ is about a shift of focus for public sector leisure, it’s about reimagining what’s possible to enable our facilities, our services, our people to collectively become a trusted partner with others across the system to deliver physical activities to benefit population health for all.
I’ve already written about the need to move the elephant in the room in order to achieve a coming together of our own sector and colleagues in healthcare, a challenge championed by Dr Kristen Hollands of our Active Academic Partnership with Salford University, who provides a compelling argument that ‘team science’ can resolve the pivot’s echo chambers.
Here at GM Active, a collective of 12 leisure trusts across Greater Manchester that manage the majority of publicly owned leisure and physical activity assets on behalf of the 10 local authorities, the first impact has been to revise our vision.
Simply put, we exist to ‘collectively improve the health of the population across Greater Manchester’.
We must say thanks to all 10 local authorities, Sport England and GM Moving for the resources that allows this project to come to fruition.
Over 10 months, we’ve worked with consultancy partner SLC to work out the next stage of our adventure and we thank them for all the outputs agreed and received. We’re now into a space where Sport England, GM Moving and GM Active can decide on our next steps with this section of the project.
Energy benchmarking, facility designs (new and retrofit options), collaboration opportunities and much more are all now within our grasp to shape decisions and guide future strategic direction.
But what’s really clear is that our work with another pivot partner, Future Fit, to educate and upskill our workforce must be a long-term commitment.
Future Fit’s partnership manifests itself as our Transformational Leaders Programme (TLP), a training programme to develop our leadership skills and capabilities in order to achieve our vision.
What has become abundantly clear is the need for the full coalition of our collective’s 3,500 staff – and wider partners – across GM to understand, support and commit to the vision too.
I’m reminded of the famous quote about a cleaner at NASA: “What’s your job?” I’m helping to put a man on the moon!”
That mindset is what we need from everyone within our collective – to live and breathe that they are ‘helping to improve population health across Greater Manchester’ regardless of their role or title.
We have created and launched a digital induction, which is our first step in making that happen. In addition, our Aspiring Managers programme for shift supervisors, duty managers and those at site level are really important to help bring those changes within our centres and local place-based teams.
Our people are clearly at the heart of our vision.
University of Salford continue to work with us, to build the academic research and rigour we need to support the reimagining of our services. This section of the project for us is known as the Active Academic Partnership or AAP.
Arguably, none of what we are proposing here is particularly new. We’ve talked for years about the wonder drug that is physical activity and movement (even more so post-pandemic and its relevance not only to physical health, but to mental health too), but in reality, we’re trying to accelerate that shift, and redefine our purpose.
We need to stop using the word ‘leisure’ and move to ‘health’, ‘wellness’ and ‘wellbeing’ to become that trusted partner to the preventative health landscape. We need to encourage everyone to move more by listening to our communities, breaking down inequalities and ensuring we don’t take a field of dreams (build it and they will come) approach, but co-design programmes and services with and for the community.
Our reimagining of what our sector can achieve is nicely summarised in two bullet points and both are within our gift:
We have some strong case studies that University of Salford continue to look at in greater depth:
These give us essential insight of how to achieve successful programmes and services, providing clinical data and evidence along the way.
The word data popped up for the first time there. Data and insight is key to our pivot programme; hence our Digital Working Group has been reshaped and renamed recently to become our Data and Insight Group – a small and subtle change but important, nonetheless.
We know from AAP, and some of the other research already conducted, that the idea of our vision is broadly well accepted by our workforce coalition. However, there are some distinctive concerns around capacity and capability of our workforce.
Once again, it comes back to our people. Our investment in our people becomes a vital facilitator in making the vision a reality.
Our journey is still in its infancy, but our project partners SLC, Future Fit and University of Salford help us to learn and evolve. Our changes may be small and subtle for now, but we know the bigger changes and further work lay just around the corner.
We know that by reimagining our sector’s offer, purpose and language we can – and will – be in a strong place to be a trusted partner for preventative health and show we can support with curative services too.
I’ll finish with some key words that become more prevalent to us every day. Data, insight, people, partnerships, co-design, community, inclusive, equity and more besides.
This is evolution not revolution, but evolution takes time. But by building our library of resources and evidence we hope to accelerate that evolution and the reimagining public sector leisure services across Greater Manchester.
GM Active’s Head of Business Operations and Company Secretary, Jon Keating, reflected on an ‘elephant in the room’ moment when he attended Elevate 2023, the leading UK trade show focused on fitness, sport, and physical activity.
Consensus among those present was that the ‘fitness sector’ needed to ‘pivot’ to work with and support the health service.
The elephant in the room – quite literally writes Jon in his blog here – was that ‘leisure’ was there; but where was ‘health’?
Here, Dr Kristen Hollands, Senior Research Fellow at the School of Health and Society at the University of Salford, looks at why the two sectors largely operate in echo chambers and how the barriers can be broken down.
In our current ways of working, knowing better doesn’t support doing better. We need to change the way we create knowing, writes Dr Hollands.
Putting it simply, to achieve the pivot here in Greater Manchester, and anywhere else in the UK, it needs the ambition and aspiration not to be hamstrung by one peer group thinking it knows better than the other. Blunt but true.
We need to mesh our collective experience and expertise to realise the enormous potential health benefits of using physical activity within the health and care systems more.
Swathes of research evidence has led to physical activity being widely hailed as the panacea to manage and prevent many long-term health conditions. And yet, globally, very few people achieve the recommended levels of physical activity – Greater Manchester is no different.
If we know what to do, why aren’t we doing it?
We have a wealth of evidence that supports using physical activity to improve many aspects of quality of life and yet, so few people taking up this treatment suggests current evidence is in some way faulty. Research evidence and approaches thus far have failed to enable health and social care systems to take a holistic approach to increasing physical activity and realising the potential benefits on the management and prevention of long-term health conditions.
Are some of the biggest health challenges simply insurmountable without redefining how the research is done and who it is done by to move the concept towards faster, more acceptable and effective implementation?
The probability that someone will become physically active depends on several factors – just a few examples include:
Unpacking the extent to which each factor plays into an individual’s decision to take part in physical activity and what kinds of support works best to overcome the barriers would take hundreds of experimental comparisons and thousands of research participants to achieve the highest levels of rigour and certainty to inform how health and care services fund and provide physical activity to help manage and prevent long-term health conditions.
Furthermore, we need research to occur in the very places and involve the populations with the greatest need. This helps to make sure that knowledge generated through research is more likely to be implemented, its impact is more sustainable and occurs faster.
We suggest what is needed is a broader movement towards grassroots, big-team science: endeavours in which an unusually large number of people in many roles – not only researchers or clinicians – across organisations, sectors and regions, organise themselves to pool intellectual and material resources in pursuit of a common goal* – to live better through moving more.
In health research fields, this is known as TEAM SCIENCE. The team science approach is about pooling resources to tackle a shared, large-scale challenge, meshing different sources of knowledge on the basis of equality (rather than hierarchy of education vs lived experience and/or practice).
Alongside placing users at the centre of the conversation, it involves connecting research activity with delivery and implementation partners from the very outset. This helps ensure the complexity of the most important health and social care challenges is respected in the solutions that are generated. It helps speed up how knowledge from research is pulled through into practice on the ground..
The fact that many people do not achieve the recommended levels of physical exercise despite the known benefits reflects our poor understanding of the diverse and complex mechanisms that influence health behaviours.
Realising the potential of physical exercise to help people live better is a long-term investment requiring effort and co-ordination across the whole system. It cannot be solved or demonstrated with a simple single intervention, clinical trial, or primary outcome/singular key performance indicator (KPI), for example, health care savings.
It is a ‘perfect problem’ for a TEAM SCIENCE approach for several reasons:
In my experience, team science brings people together from all disciplines, backgrounds and experience, fostering a culture of mutual respect around shared goals. It could dispel some common myths.
Becoming physically active converts to health outcomes at population/health systems levels instantly – wrong!
It’s a long-term investment which needs the whole system to come together to do their bit, consistently over time.
For example, if someone attends a physical activity session in their local leisure centre but then goes home in the car, via the chippy while smoking, the physical activity alone won’t achieve the desired health outcome. We also need other parts of the system to support the opportunity to move more and to eat more healthily (quickly, cost effectively and enjoyably), and to restrict smoking.
Physical activity is a medication to be given under supervision and must come with the notion of prescribed levels to be worthwhile. That’s wrong too, as is the notion that unless people are active at guideline levels, it’s not worth doing, and/or activity is unsafe for some people with long-term conditions and needs to be supervised and at the ‘right dose’.
Instead, we must recognise many people will need to build up to the recommended ‘dose’ in healthcare terms or in exercise terms; we need to build up the fitness.
Supporting people to become more active and build towards guideline levels of what will help them realise health benefits can only be done by addressing the wider social factors determining health behaviours (ie: all those factors that affect people’s decision to be active or not).
Physical activity is NOT a pill to be prescribed for and overseen only by health professionals. It’s a way of life that many health and allied healthy lifestyle professionals and social carers need to support – we need many parts of the system to work together. It’s more about ‘support’ than ‘treatment’.
If our shared aim is to support everyone to live better through movement then the only way we will see more people being active is to change the way we currently provide support.
Often the issue of physical activity is seen as a behavioural change on the part of the person that needs to become more active. This way of thinking isn’t working – the vast majority of us do not achieve recommended physical activity guidelines. Everyone in the chain of physical activity provision and use needs to change their behaviour – this means you and me too!
To change the way, we provide support for physical activity means there are many layers of behavioural change that need to happen.
Healthcare professionals need to change their clinical practice behaviours to include conversations about physical activity and to refer to available physical activity services more.
People need support to overcome the social factors determining their health behaviours. For example, social prescribers and voluntary partners need to work alongside clinical referrals to help more patients take up the referrals they are offered.
And we need to offer opportunities for physical activity that support people to maintain levels for long enough to realise health improvements. Only then will we reap a return on investment via savings for the NHS at a population level.
As part of the Pivot to Active Wellbeing, we are prioritising spending time working with ALL stakeholders (decision-makers, providers and recipients) to agree a core set of KPIs that are closer to the behaviours and outcomes physical activity services actually have influence over (not only the headline NHS business outcomes that are long term and system-wide achievements/investments).
All of these things point to the idea that supporting people to move more is not the job of the healthcare system nor of the leisure sector alone.
We need many people in many different roles across the health and care systems and within the community to contribute to addressing the health challenge.
So, to address ’the elephant in the room’ and build our Move More Team Science, our Active Academic Partnership is bringing all the stakeholders together to make co-ordinated action and evidence necessary to help everyone live better through movement in three ways:
To achieve this, underlying conditions need to be in place:
Then, and only then, will two disparate elephant tribes come together to make one.
The phrase ‘elephant in the room’ sprang to mind when I attended Elevate 2023, the leading trade show in the UK focused on fitness, sport, and physical activity.
I’ve been in post as GM Active’s Head of Business Operations and Company Secretary for around 15 months now and as an industry I’ve heard lots of talk about how we need to transform our focus and terminology to reflect the much sought-after sector shift towards what we generally call ‘health’.
Our Pivot to Active Wellbeing project is well underway, and we continue to talk about connecting with health as part of the solution for the future of leisure (although it’s broadly accepted we need to stop using this word in favour of health, wellbeing and/or wellness).
This ‘pivot’ will enable the use of public sector leisure to support health with the offers available at 99 GM Active centres, or out in our communities utilising our coalition of 3,500 staff.
However, in those 15 months there’s only been a handful of occasions when ‘leisure’ and ‘health’ have been in the same room. The exceptions to this state of affairs have been our Prehab4Cancer model, and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) Falls Collaborative – where we’ve talked about strength and balance programmes that public sector leisure can provide as part of a falls prevention solution.
New to my role, I attended my first Elevate conference last year when the notion of ‘pivot’ was starting to gain momentum with lots of conversations taking place about connecting with health.
Twelve months later, a less ‘green’ version of Jon Keating was invited to lead a couple of panel discussions as part of Elevate 2023. I enjoyed the experience, the audience had certainly swelled and the noise around ‘pivot’ and connecting with health had grown significantly.
And here’s the elephant in the room – quite literally. Yes, ‘leisure’ was there; but where was ‘health’?
In fact, one of my panel members declared she was leaving London and heading straight back to Manchester to participate in another panel session at a health conference. I couldn’t help thinking why these events are not connected.
‘Pivot’ simply cannot happen without health partners being in the room. The whole ecosystem around Greater Manchester has taken almost a decade to evolve, so if we are to make an impact and a difference these connections need to be developed and amplified at the earliest opportunity.
I maybe seeing this simplistically, but it seems logical to me that an event focused on community health, preventing long-term health conditions, and supporting the NHS should be connected with the public sector leisure and fitness sector.
We need to broker these new relationships and partnerships. We need people in the same space and not one event happening in London whilst the other takes place in Manchester.
I really enjoyed this year’s Elevate and found time to discuss with Elevate Director Lucy Findlay what I saw as the next steps required and for ‘pivot’ to actually be realised.
On arrival at the Excel centre, I did have a wry smile to myself. Opposite the Elevate conference on the other side of the hall was a conference dedicated to renewable energ, one of our sector’s biggest challenges right now. Unsustainable energy costs are a reason for a number site closures (including in Greater Manchester). Is this another example of more connections being required?
But back to the pivot. Everyone in the room was clearly on board with the notion pivoting for the purpose of both preventative and curative solutions that our sector can (and already is on a small scale) able to provide. But we’re preaching to the converted, the majority of the event is from the same sector. I strongly believe in order to change the dial we need ‘health’ in the room.
Whilst I’m not an event organiser, and as the only employee of GM Active, I cannot put my head above the parapet to organise such an event.
But I do call on those who can challenge the status quo to look for collaborative event opportunities. My boss, GM Active Andy King, has said much the same in a recent LinkedIn post and many seem to agree. But the clock is already ticking.
I’ve benefitted hugely in relation to personal development, education and making connections at many national events over the last 15 months but I do wonder if they could be even more beneficial by having the right collaborations and connections.
My fear is without this that any conference in 2024 will see the same audience agreeing the same principles but with no tangible progress or actions taking place.
This is not a criticism, but rather my observations of improving future events, and ensuring the right relationships and partnerships can continue to grow. We need to shift the elephant – and fast!
From tiny acorns grow mighty oak trees!
The pandemic quickly followed by the cost-of-living crisis and spiralling energy prices have all combined to give our industry quite a battering.
So, it was with the weight of our industry weighing heavily on my shoulders that I embarked on a watershed moment (no pun intended) at Stockport’s Grand Central Pools to meet with key figures from Ofgem, the UK’s energy regulator, whose role it is to protect energy consumers, writes Jon Keating, GM Active’s Head of Business Operations and Company Secretary.
Given the Greater Manchester location, I’d been entrusted by colleagues at UKactive to help facilitate Ofgem’s fact-finding mission, which was led by Jonathan Brearley, CEO, Louise van Rensburg, Head of Non-Domestic Retail Policy, and Harry Booty, Senior Stakeholder and Communications Manager.
In light of the energy crisis this is a hugely important connection, not just across Greater Manchester but for our sector as a whole.
As high energy consumers – particularly those sites with pools – we need to do all we can to protect the sector against the risks of rising energy costs, and work tirelessly to achieve less reliance on fossil fuels and ensure sustainable and green energy solutions using the latest technology, are front and centre at all sites.
This is vital to mitigate against future rising costs and to control our own destiny.
Fact-finding: (left to right): Louise Van Rensberg, Ofgem’s Head of Non-Domestic Retail Policy, Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem CEO, John Matson, Head of Facilities, Life Leisure, and Jon Keating, GM Active’s Head of Business Operations and Company Secretary.
Without putting too light a spin on things, the pressure was on to make sure that on behalf of the whole sector I along with colleagues from Life Leisure (Stockport Active CIC) were able to present the risks and challenges in great detail.
I felt humbled and honoured that I was entrusted to do so on behalf of the industry.
Grand Central is a 50m pool and now 30 years old. It has seen significant challenges and rising costs during the peak of the energy crisis. For this site alone, utility costs are running at more than £1million per annum, and as with many facilities that raises the question of whether it’s actually sustainable without some sort of financial intervention – and that’s where connecting with Ofgem could be crucial.
I was joined on the site visit with colleagues from Life Leisure in Charlene Murphy, General Manager, and John Matson, Head of Facilities, who both did a stellar job pointing out all the risks and challenges of a volatile energy market and the impact of wholesale cost spikes.
We started discussions at the main pool, explaining why energy is needed 24/7, 365 days-a-year not only to keep the pool at the right temperature but to power the water and air filtration, lighting and much more besides. John in particular was able to point out all areas of high energy consumption.
We then moved into the gym, and again, we were able to point out lighting, gym equipment and all areas of significant energy usage.
In all the discussions Charlene, John and I were able to point to areas of retrofit solutions. What we also pointed out was that energy and cost saving technology solutions exist but often come at a high price, and as a sector still recovering from a pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and high energy prices, we simply don’t have the capital to be able to invest in these solutions.
Finally, we moved into the plant room. Our Ofgem colleagues were blown away by the size of the plant room, and the sheer volume of equipment behind the scenes that’s needed to keep a centre such as Grand Central fully operational. As our Ofgem visitors stated, they doubted the general public has any idea what happens behind the scenes to keep the pool water clean and heated, air filtered, facilities lit and heated and much more besides.
Overall, I’m confident that between Charlene, John and I, we really highlighted the challenges and risks to the sector and made the visit of Ofgem a hugely beneficial one, with plans for follow-ups and next steps with UKactive.
Right: John Matson explains how the Grand Central boilers work to the Ofgem visitors.
Jonathan and Louise asked many searching questions all of which we were able to respond to between us. I also highlighted that a recent energy benchmarking exercise for Greater Manchester showed that if all publicly owned leisure sites were on the lowest tariffs there would be a £10 million cost saving, and if Ofgem can support us with anything it would be to help us to secure the best deals across the sector.
Louise in particular asked for the three key areas the sector needs help and support with in relation to energy. Our responses, starting with the most obvious:
That third point was a significant area I spoke to our Ofgem visitors about.
In the light of Our Pivot to Active Wellbeing project in GM, we must as a sector be part of a health, wellness and wellbeing solution across the country.
I was able to speak about our Prehab4Cancer programme and how this needs expansion, and how over time it can be expanded to other long term health conditions. I pointed out that as a sector we can offer both preventative and curative health solutions as a trusted partner to the ICB.
This in the context of energy is vital, and a key component of why our sector needs protecting from the volatile market and any future energy spikes should they occur again.
Huge thanks to Charlene and John from Life leisure, who did our sector proud, and thank you to UKactive for putting faith in me to carry out this task on our industry’s behalf. Here’s hoping we some benefit.
Our strategic business partners are recruited for the value they bring to GM Active and our member organisations, as well as their commitment to helping us achieve our vision – to help people across Greater Manchester live healthy, happy, and longer lives.
Each business partner has its own niche role in our collective vision and mission, and we are always grateful for their valuable input!
This year we welcome five new strategic business partners, who are joining our three existing partners:
Gladstone Software provides cloud-based leisure management software to leisure centres, universities and health clubs across the UK and Ireland, with everything they need to attract, retain and manage members. More than 500 health and leisure operators enjoy the benefits of Gladstone’s leisure management software, with over 40,000 users and 8m members relying on the software 24/7 for joining, booking and payments. The reporting solution also facilitates advanced reporting and analytics for operators to dive deeper into their data.
Gladstone’s products include:
Innerva provides power-assisted technology for the leisure industry, a wellbeing solution for older adults, people with long term health conditions and harder to reach communities.
Leisure centres attract hundreds of new members by providing a safe and effective leisure/active wellbeing opportunity for underserved communities and a non-threatening entry point for reluctant exercisers which complements existing health, fitness & leisure activities.
The Innerva solution offers a socially vibrant environment where users can pursue their health objectives, supporting older populations to become and stay more active and helping users retain their independence as they age.
Innerva’s extensive range of power-assisted machines are ideal for:
Innerva have recently launched a ‘brand in a box’ solution for operators supporting them to install the complete older adult wellbeing solution. The Innerva solution provides measurable contributions to local authority health and wellbeing strategies. This is important for council-run centres and provides a competitive edge for leisure trusts bidding to run local authority centres.
Reach Wellness specialises in innovative niche products to supplement standard fitness equipment.
Established in 2003 to provide innovative world class equipment to the fitness and wellness industry, we actually have more than 30 years’ experience in developing and establishing leading brands, and together with a global network and reach, we are ideally positioned to source cutting edge technology to provide a USP for your fitness facility.
Whilst we supply standard fitness equipment (including cardiovascular, resistance and free weights) from all the major manufacturers, we specialise in innovative niche products that will supplement and complement existing equipment.
Reach Wellness is the exclusive distributor for UK and Ireland for FIVE Concept (mobilisation and movement preparation), SensoPro (balance and co-ordination) and Solid Infinity System (wall-mounted functional training).
We also provide the following services:
The Great Outdoor Gym Company creates and activates outdoor fitness and activity spaces.
Our solutions include outdoor gym packages, bespoke gym designs along with activation services, programmes, a digital content platform and virtual activator screens.
Since 2007, The Great Outdoor Gym Company (TGO) has been pioneering outdoor fitness equipment, safety standards, and technology. Community health and sustainability are at the core of our business, and why we do what we do.
From installing for councils and schools nationwide, to having a TGO tree planted by the Prime Minister, to taking part in world events like the London Olympics, COP21 (Paris) and COP22 (Marrakech), where UNIDO’s Director General opened our legacy TGO Energy Gym – we are always grateful for challenges of all shapes and sizes.
By doing the right thing, we’ve found so many excellent partners to work with worldwide, who share our vision for a healthier, happier, and greener world. We have installed over 2000 gyms worldwide.
We are proud to support GM Active, a fellow pioneer.
Future Fit for Business is the UK’s most trusted name in the provision of learning and development services.
They currently work with a number of employer partners in both the public and private sector, helping them to develop and empower their workforces.
Their aim is to empower workforces to deliver positive impacts to their wider communities through the provision of bespoke world-class learning and development solutions.
Cornerstone Design and Marketing is a full service agency with extensive leisure, health and pharmaceutical industry experience.
We have been a trusted and reputable marketing agency partner to the leisure industry for many years.
We work alongside a growing number of leisure trusts and fitness providers, developing strong, results-driven marketing strategies which allow our clients to compete with national competitors at a local or regional level.
We focus on meaningful engagement with audiences which is devised not only to increase membership but also aimed at that all-important member retention and long-term loyalty.
Leisure is a sector we’ve matured with as an agency and, essentially, it’s one that we truly value for the hugely significant role it plays in our communities and society as a whole.
Commercially conscious, we’re equally connected to communities and health outcomes, carefully balancing the two to help with the delivery of healthier, more active and fulfilling audience lifestyles while simultaneously achieving healthier business outcomes and stability for clients.
We’re an ethical, highly reputable, agency with a multi-discipline team – growing at around 30% YOY – offering expertise and creativity within the fileds of:
These services are key to implementing a comprehensive and well-considered marketing and communications strategy or campaign and we synchronise all or a selection of those disciplines depending on the brief.
Our achievements aren’t just honed from experience and insight. Cornerstone is built around outstanding results, recommendations and much-valued good relationships – achievements we’re very, very proud of.
We specialise in results-driven B2B and B2C campaigns and marketing support for clients and we have an excellent track record in providing transformational strategic marketing and creative campaign expertise to our portfolio of regional and national organisations.
Founded in 1983, Technogym is a world leader brand in fitness, wellness, sport and health. Technogym provides a complete Ecosystem made of connected smart fitness equipment, digital services and training contents for both professional and home use. Thanks to the open Mywellness CRM Platform people can connect to their personal training experience anywhere, both on Technogym equipment and mobile devices. Operators can engage and interact with users anywhere, improving the customer journey, business efficiency and results by gaining a holistic understanding of individual needs, interests, habits and human performance.
With over 2,500 employees Technogym is present in over 100 countries. More than 85,000 Wellness centers and 400,000 private homes in the world are equipped with Technogym. Technogym has been appointed Official Supplier to the Paris 2024 Olympics for the ninth time, after Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Turin 2006, Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo 2020.
Technogym’s end-to-end wellness solution includes consultation, training and certification, marketing support, interior design, installation and maintenance, technical support, warranty and service contracts, and financial solutions.
As one of the UK’s largest independent Chartered Insurance Brokers we can advise on all aspects of cover that will protect your assets, liabilities, trustees, volunteers, supporters, participants and activities against the risks your trust will face on a daily basis.
What makes us different is that we are owned by the people who run the business. This brings real advantages in what we can do for you
Our team of leisure experts have experience of placing insurance cover for over 400 leisure locations , allowing each trust the opportunity to tailor cover to suit their demands and needs. This means you only pay for the cover you need ensuring the pricing is competitive and the cover relevant.
We can provide cover for single leisure centres or multiple locations, from 5 staff to a workforce of 500, revenues from £50,000 to £250m. We provide our service, skills and sector knowledge to Leisure Trusts of all sizes.
If you offer zip wiring, have gorge walkers navigating a rocky stream or perhaps do something simple like badminton or swimming, all these activities carry an element of risk in them and it’s important for you to have the right level of protection in place if something goes wrong. We also understand that from time to time things change – our policies are flexible and can adapt to almost any change you advise us of.
We work with a market-leading panel of insurers and the products we offer are adapted to your trust’s individual requirements. We can also support with tailored risk management workshops that are informative, punchy and engaging, but with important messages delivered.
Of course, we appreciate that you buy insurance to help when things go wrong and that is why as well as providing expert advice and experience placing insurance, we prioritise our claims service to ensure we deliver when you need it most. We will allocate an experienced Claim Handler to manage your claim from the moment of reporting right through to settlement. Your Account Manager will also provide regular updates to you giving you reliable data on how your claims experience is looking to help ensure there are no surprises at renewal.
By giving you access to people who can make decisions, we are able to respond quickly to our clients’ changing insurance needs and make the most of opportunities. We can focus on the longer term, making our service better and our relationships stronger
Over the years we have invested in building some of the best teams in the insurance market and attracting real talent to our business.
All of this ensures we provide you with the right insurance at the right price – backed up with a great service.
But just because something is good, doesn’t mean that we won’t keep working to make it better.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham made the remark at a graduation ceremony for graduates of our Transformational Leaders Programme, designed to help them transition from being ‘fitness and facilities’ managers to the vanguard of public health and wellbeing.
Mr Burnham told our two cohorts of graduates they had a key part to play in reaching out to communities where the crisis was so bad foodbank users were only seeking store cupboard foods such as dried pasta and tinned foods.
Mr Burnham said: “This is a huge community challenge for areas of Greater Manchester. Helping people to be active and supporting their wellbeing will be key to helping families and individuals to cope throughout this crisis.”
We want to inspire the region’s community leisure workforce to offer new ways of helping people across Greater Manchester live healthy, happy and fulfilled lives. Our programme has been created to empower our member-organisations’ staff to play a greater role in developing new wellness services and innovative, cross-sectoral responses to current and emerging population health needs.
Our programme will cover key topics that will help staff understand their role within the wider ecosystem and look at wellness, NHS and social care systems with a view to identifying more collaborative ways of working with other professionals and community groups.
He called for closer links with GPs to generate exercise on prescription and social interventions, which would only ‘be taking money away from pharmaceutical companies, nobody else’ – his comments chiming with our ‘We Move as One’ strategy that seeks to encourage active lives, reduce health inequalities, and support those who need our help the most.
He also warned the impacts of the crisis threatened a ‘mental health pandemic’: “We must do more to promote physical activity linked to mental health, helping to lift the mood of individuals and communities,” he added.
We held the graduation ceremony at the Double Tree by Hilton in Manchester, where Mr Burnham also spoke about our award-winning Prehab4Cancer (P4C) programme, which recently won the Best Not for Profit Working in Partnership with the NHS award from the Health Service Journal, held in high esteem within the NHS for its focus on healthcare excellence.
P4C facilitates cancer patients to engage in exercise, nutrition, and wellbeing assessments and interventions before, during and after treatment. Since its inception in 2019, P4C has supported 3,500 patients in Greater Manchester in preparing for the physiological challenges of cancer treatments.
Mr Burnham referred to P4C as ‘mission critical’ with an opportunity to evolve the programme to support other long term health conditions and life-threatening disease.
Indeed, our strategy now is to extend the prehabilitation principle to more cancers, with a 10-year ambition to be treating up to 10,000 patients a year, and a workforce of approximately 80 exercise professionals with specialist knowledge to support them.
P4C Programme Manager, Kirsty Rowlinson-Groves told the said: “We want to be able to offer a prehab service to anyone in Greater Manchester who is diagnosed with cancer. We want to be embedded within all cancer pathways and ensure all patients have access to the programme. This will come with the use of the data we are collecting to build an evidence base and a case for further long term, sustainable funding.”
Our Transformational Leaders Programme is committed to the promotion of co-working between physical activity and clinical healthcare providers.
It is supported by GreaterSport and made possible with investment from the National Lottery, through the local pilot in Greater Manchester with Sport England. The programme has been designed and delivered in partnership with the training provider Future Fit Training, a learning and development organisation with more than 30 years of experience.
Our Chair, Andy King, said: “It is vital that staff across the community leisure sector understand much more about the wider community we serve and how we can better play our part in improving health and wellbeing services for everyone across Greater Manchester.”
The programme covers the principles of leadership, creating culture, understanding today’s leisure and wellness sector including key agendas, services, and organisations; whole system thinking, health inequalities, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and leading for renewal.
Elaine Briggs, Chief Education and Partnership Officer at Future Fit Training, said: “We believe this training is vital to ensure that we are creating leaders of the future who understand how they can influence change in their own communities and create a joined-up approach to health and wellness, while motivating their teams through dynamic and passionate leadership.”
Find out more about our Transformational Leadership Programme
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham made the remark at a graduation ceremony for graduates of our Transformational Leaders Programme, designed to help them transition from being ‘fitness and facilities’ managers to the vanguard of public health and wellbeing.
Mr Burnham told our two cohorts of graduates they had a key part to play in reaching out to communities where the crisis was so bad foodbank users were only seeking store cupboard foods such as dried pasta and tinned foods.
Mr Burnham said: “This is a huge community challenge for areas of Greater Manchester. Helping people to be active and supporting their wellbeing will be key to helping families and individuals to cope throughout this crisis.”
We want to inspire the region’s community leisure workforce to offer new ways of helping people across Greater Manchester live healthy, happy and fulfilled lives. Our programme has been created to empower our member-organisations’ staff to play a greater role in developing new wellness services and innovative, cross-sectoral responses to current and emerging population health needs.
Our programme will cover key topics that will help staff understand their role within the wider ecosystem and look at wellness, NHS and social care systems with a view to identifying more collaborative ways of working with other professionals and community groups.
Dr Moore, who is based at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, also revealed P4C is the largest prehab programme in the world and added: “I can assure you it’s only going to get bigger. The more patients we have the more evidence we gather. To me, the one main outcome (of P4C) is quality of life, how our patients return to normal life. It’s simple but it’s science based.”
Our AHP Clinical Lead, Dr Zoe Merchant, added: “Ultimately, what we are trying to do is support people to be themselves, not be cancer patients. You come along to the local gym and you see Joan from down the road and you’re a normal person in the gym. Yes, you’re having cancer treatment but then you can come out of it and go back to the gym. That’s another reason doing it [P4C] in the community is very important.
“It’s not just about the scientific approach, it’s about what we must do from an exercise perspective, it’s about normalisation and encouraging people that once they’ve finished [treatment] they can get back to their lives.
“From a mental health perspective, even though there’s a lot more we can do in terms of providing psychological and mental health support, we often get told how well supported people feel coming off the programme in comparison to people who, unfortunately, haven’t had that opportunity. That’s just as important as the exercise side of the programme.”
The P4C programme is offered to patients with lung, colorectal (bowel) and oesophago-gastric (often referred to as upper GI) cancers.
We were delighted when independent research led to recurrent funding for our Greater Manchester scheme. It found that P4C hospital patients were able to be discharged home sooner and enjoyed a better recovery.
The strategy now is to extend the prehabilitation principle to more cancers, with a 10-year ambition to be treating up to 10,000 patients a year. This could grow the workforce up to 40 Level 3 exercise instructors and 40 Level 4 exercise specialists
P4C Programme Manager, Kirsty Rowlinson-Groves told the celebration: “We want to be able to offer a prehab service to anyone in Greater Manchester who is diagnosed with cancer. We want to be embedded within all cancer pathways and ensure all patients have access to the programme. This will come with the use of the data we are collecting to build an evidence base and a case for further long term, sustainable funding.”
Kirsty’s comments echo those of Greater Manchester city-region Mayor Andy Burnham. Speaking at a graduation ceremony for our Transformational Leadership Programme, he described P4C as ‘mission critical’ and called for us to extend the programme to more illnesses.
And our former chair, Pete Burt, added his voice to the aspiration to reach more cancer patients. Speaking at the HSJ award celebration, he said: “P4C is a great example of what can be achieved, and it carries on growing and growing. It doesn’t stop here; we’ll reach other conditions and illnesses that patients have.
“There’s so many people talking about how important physical activity is for everybody’s health and wellbeing. What you can actually see when you put into practice and put into practice well, is that it works, and it works at scale. Trying to do things at scale is very important – this is change in a big way.
“I’d like to see every single person become an evangelist for physical activity, evangelists for the work we do as a leisure sector because I’ve been to many conferences and physical activity is a magic pill, it’s a wonder drug and it’s this and it’s that and the other, but proving it, getting the wider population to buy into that is enormously difficult.”
Deputy Programme Manager, Jack Murphy, shared an anecdote with the gathering that put P4C’s impact into perspective. He said: “I was with some patients when one of them said, ‘I’m 72 and I’ve never been in a bloody gym in my life, but I love it and I’m never going to stop!’
“That’s what this programme is doing – it’s changing people’s lives forever.”
Our P4C programme is a co-designed transformation programme between GM Active and GM Cancer Alliance. What began as a test project in 2019 has now secured its future following the independent evaluation report.
Our Chair, Andy King, says: “This programme is designed to empower patients to take an active role in their cancer care. It prepares patients for the treatments and surgeries and aims to provide positive outcomes for patients during recovery and beyond.”
P4C team celebration – Dr John Moore is pictured third left, while Kirsty Rowlinson-Groves is pictured sixth right holding the HSJ award next to Dr Zoe Merchant (fifth right). Jack Murphy is pictured centre in the white shirt.
Encouraging active lives, reducing health inequalities and supporting those who need our help the most are central to our new strategy entitled ‘We Move As One’.
As a collective of 12 leisure and community organisations across Greater Manchester, we are all part of the same movement – to inspire and encourage more people to become physically active and to improve the health and wellbeing of our communities across Greater Manchester.
Andy King, Chair of GM Active, says: “Our shared approach gives us real opportunity to bring about change. We are a unique combination of organisations and people – pioneers in the leisure sector. By collaborating, we have a greater ‘real life’ impact for the people of Greater Manchester.
“Working in response to the GM Moving in Action strategy, we have created a new ‘We Move As One’ strategy, which will underpin our current success with greater strategic direction and commercial sustainability.”
Andy adds: “A whole system approach working together across Greater Manchester had successfully reduced inactivity at two and a half times the national rate. We were proud of what the people of Manchester had achieved but then, devastatingly, the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
“The latest Active Lives data for adults, from May 2020 to May 2021, shows that the proportion of adults moving for at least 30 minutes a week in Greater Manchester has decreased by 2.4%. That means there are 48,300 more people across the region who are inactive compared to the previous 12 months.
“The pandemic has caused untold damage in Greater Manchester’s communities, exacerbating already-entrenched health inequalities. The importance of, and emphasis on, population-wide health and wellbeing has never been more pertinent, and our community-level leisure facilities, supporting those who need our help the most, are integral to the region’s recovery.
“COVID-19 has given us time to rethink the opportunities available to help our different communities live more active lives and to truly value the importance of mental health. Although the pandemic has knocked us, it’s our chance to work differently and come back even stronger.”
Chris Turner, our Head of Business Operations, says: “Our strategy offers clear direction and innovative, sustainable solutions to local, regional and national agendas. We can provide solutions, leadership and partnership for multiple programmes and stakeholders – for NHS funders, grant providers, larger organisations with funding for localised schemes, local authorities, GP practices and health leaders.
“We are actively seeking new partners, opportunities for collaboration and innovative ways of working. We can’t do this alone. If our plans, purpose and intent chime with you, please do connect with us and be part of our transformational movement.”
Our ambition to encourage active lives and to help reduce health inequalities across the Greater Manchester city-region are regularly documented on this website and you will find full details of the ‘We Move As One’ strategy here.
