A COUNCIL-owned leisure and heritage company set to be launched in Hull needs to have a commercial edge, councillors have been told.
A total of 824 Hull City Council staff working in the authority's leisure centres, libraries, museums, parks and catering services are expected to transfer to the new company – City Activities Limited – later this year.
It will manage most of the council's current leisure and heritage assets, including the New Theatre, the City Hall, the History Centre, all the city centre museums and the Ferens Art Gallery.
The cash-strapped council hopes to save about £1m a year through staff moving off its books.
At the same time, the new not-for-profit company is expected to make the most of tax breaks not currently available to the council.
However, an initial business case for the new company also envisages annual efficiency savings of about £180,000 a year.
Scrutiny councillors who discussed the business case at the meting yesterday said this did not have to mean job losses in the future.
Committee chairman Councillor Tom McVie said: "Efficiency can mean a lot of things.
"In this case, it does not have to be about job losses.
"It should be about getting out there and becoming more competitive in the marketplace to increase earnings."
However, Councillor Abi Bell said the initial business plan was limited and lacking imagination.
She said: "The concern for me is less about the financial saving, which is what this seems to revolve around, and more about improving the assets and the services being provided.
"It does not explain how the new company is going to be more competitive in what is already a crowded market.
"There should be some idea how that is going to be achieved but, at the moment, it lacks imagination."
The only major future proposed investment in the business plan is a new six-lane swimming pool at Woodford Leisure Centre in Holderness Road, east Hull.
However, that scheme is based on the assumption that the existing East Hull Pools complex, also in Holderness Road, will close.
Trish Dalby, the council's director of commissioning, accepted the driving force behind the creation of the new company was a need for the authority to save money as a result of government funding cuts.
She said: "First and foremost, this represents the opportunity to make financial savings for the council.
"A lot of these services are currently heavily subsidised but they are also used by a lot of people across the city."
She said any future proposals to reduce or expand the services being transferred would rest with the new company.
However, she stressed they would also have to be signed off by the council as part of an annual review of the company's business plan.
Mitch Upfold, the council's head of leisure and sport, said: "What the council does now will carry on at the inception of the new company but that does not stop the board from making recommendations for changes and it will not stop the council as the client from putting forward proposals for doing things differently."
Big shake-up looms THE new-look council-owned leisure company will see one of the biggest recent shake-ups in the way Hull City Council operates.More than 800 mostly front-line staff will transfer to the company later this year.
They currently work in sports centres, swimming pools, museums, libraries, entertainment venues, Sutton Park Golf Course, parks and playing fields, box office and tourist information services, as well as council catering operations.
Some staff in personnel and finance are also expected to switch.
The company will be overseen by an unpaid board of councillors
