A review of year ending March 2022
As a registered charity, which runs events, venues and leisure centres across Dorset, Hampshire and in London, including Bournemouth International Centre (BIC), BH Live has a social mission to make a positive difference to the quality of people’s lives and invest any surplus revenues into fulfilling that end.
Having made a £2.5 million loss in the wake of Covid, BH Live’s focus has since been on rebuilding the charity following the detrimental impact of lockdowns on the events, leisure, and culture industry.
By re-engaging with customers to grow confidence, revitalising its teams, focusing on its core services, embracing technology and improved processes to streamline services, and efficient procurement, BH Live has bounced back, protecting vital public amenities for continued community health and wellbeing.
Getting people active again
Despite trading restrictions for much of 2021/22, BH Live Active membership numbers across the organisation’s centres are now on their way to returning to pre-pandemic levels – having grown from 18,350 to 23,500 across Dorset and Hampshire by March 2022.
Its health and well-being programmes continued to expand, harnessing the power of physical activity to improve the lives of those with long-term health conditions, people from underrepresented groups, older people, and people on a low income.
To broaden its reach across the community to facilitate regular exercise, BH Live launched an on-demand and live-streaming platform for fitness classes with 3,000 people regularly accessing exercise classes each month.
Working with community health partners such as Active Dorset, EnergiseME, BreatheEasy Southsea, BH Live is also developing even more specialised exercise classes for people with certain health needs. This includes Parkinson’s Disease, COPD, osteoarthritis, poor mental health, head injuries, those rehabilitating following a stroke or cardiac incident, or women experiencing perimenopausal symptoms. With an average of 1,000 people accessing such health programmes each week, the charity is 90% back to pre-pandemic numbers of attendees.
In line with a national trend, the charity has also seen junior activities such as swimming, tennis and gymnastics lessons, football and participation in sports exceed anticipated numbers. BH Live has expanded its junior activity timetable to provide more opportunities for young people aged from six months to 16 years. There are also more SEN sessions and activities for people with additional needs helping to grow participation.
It has been pleasing to see school, community and club participation in sports make a comeback too, with events such as the BH Live City Games for schools in Hampshire, and subsidised activity camps during school holidays. Hosting regional and national competitive events, has provided a platform for many local young people to excel in swimming, tennis, and gymnastics.
BH Live also facilitates school swimming lessons to more than 60 local schools across Bournemouth and Portsmouth and continues to support local swim clubs through subsidised pool hire. Free swimming for under 5s in Bournemouth and East Dorset, and under 12s in Portsmouth is boosting participation in swimming too.
Bringing culture back
Factors fuelling a return to full-capacity cultural events during 2021/22 included a gradual lift in restrictions coupled with a diverse and attractive programme of music, comedy, and entertainment with broad appeal. The business events, conference and exhibitions industry however took longer to recover. Consumer confidence and staffing challenges across the events and hospitality sector all played their part.
Despite this, there were many highlights from the year including James Blunt, Alan Carr, Nick Cave, Romesh Ranganathan, Cliff Richard, Michael Ball and Alfie Boe, JLS, Simply Red, War of the Worlds, Elbow, The Specials, McFly, Gary Barlow, Texas and Stormzy.
Other events included Future Cheer, a national cheerleading competition, Hillsong services, martial arts events, concerts by London Mozart Players, Talawa and SAVVY, Jess Gillam and the welcome return of musicals and community theatre – all bringing new audiences into venues.
Despite the re-emergence of Omicron over the 2021/22 winter period which challenged the staff, cast and crew, seasonal Pantomimes were still delivered. The BIC also had 31,000 visitors to its seasonal Cool Coast Ice Rink, almost 5,000 more than expected.
BH Live invested in its ticketing platform and relaunched improved venue websites while still generating more than £7 million in economic impact for the local region through cultural events – a phenomenal effort with its reduced teams and income.
BH Live’s purpose and community investment
BH Live’s social purpose is to make a difference to the quality of people’s lives. As a charitable trust, it relies on surplus revenue from its commercial activity to fulfil this purpose and power investment into its services and facilities.
Income from BH Live’s trading subsidiary for business events and hospitality directly supports BH Live’s charitable activities. While continued restrictions earlier in the year remained in place for indoor business events, the BH Live team was able to capitalise on outdoor hospitality, enabling BH Live to generate much-needed income and retain some of its teams.
Investment over the year included essential maintenance and improvements to football pitches and tennis courts, refurbished hospitality areas, improved access to centres, developments in technology to help customers manage their activities, repairs and decoration, light installations, and new fitness equipment to increase capacity.
Ageing leisure and event facilities in Portsmouth have been repurposed thanks to local authority funding – transforming a pool and event space that was no longer fit for purpose, into Exploria – a bright and inclusive play and bounce attraction, alongside a brand new BH Live Active gym and fitness studios with state-of-the-art equipment and activities accessible to all.
BH Live is committed to being net zero carbon by 2030 and carbon neutral by 2035 and has introduced a number of measures to reduce energy consumption. These include LED and CHP installations, plus more efficient water, and lighting controls.
Looking ahead
Priorities for BH Live in the year ahead included a continued focus on rebuilding the charity, taking more steps to tackle the increasing cost of energy, enabling continued participation for its customers, and reinforcing the positive work BH Live does for the communities it serves.
Despite our efforts during 2021/2022 to reduce energy consumption, ongoing price increases and impact on the cost of living for our customers and staff are deeply concerning.
Venues and leisure centres are high consumers of energy. Working with local authority partners, BH Live has already put several measures in place to reduce consumption and minimise impact. Future plans include increasing the use of Solar PV and more sustainable heating to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
As business events return, the conference exhibition calendar is filling up with several unions and high-profile association events returning. BH Live continues to support the region’s Business Tourism Bureau, Business Events Bournemouth, and work closely with the region’s BIDs (Business Improvement Districts) to bring major events into the region.
Paul Collins, BH Live Chair
Looking back over 2021/2022 Paul Collins, recently appointed Chair of the charity’s board of directors says:
“Our purpose as a registered charity is to provide positive experiences that enrich lives and improve the well-being of the people and communities we serve. It has been a great pleasure to see our ability to do that restored post-pandemic.
“While the impact of lockdowns and restrictions inevitably hit us hard, over the past year we have made great inroads towards recovery, for our team, services, and customers.
“The biggest challenge for BH Live going forward will undoubtedly be the rising energy costs, which are projected to balloon from £1.6 million in 2019/2020 to an estimated £3.7 million next year.
“The pandemic wiped out all our reserves which over the past year we have been trying to rebuild so that we can continue delivering services for the benefit of the local community. There is no doubt though that we, alongside many other charities and organisations, are facing difficult times ahead.
“The bounce back we’ve seen over the past year and the ‘invest to save’ measures we’ve taken will in the short term help us keep innovating, investing, and improving what we do.
“Work is already underway to reduce energy usage with several ‘switch off’ policies, using pool covers, and investment in Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems, which are more efficient because they make use of heat which would otherwise be wasted when generating electrical or mechanical power.
“We know that many rely on our services for their health and wellbeing. And because our centres are warm community hubs, especially during these winter months, we are seeing more people stay for longer, reinforcing the impact we have on local people’s lives.
“While the soaring cost of energy and other inflationary pressures still present profound challenges, we remain determined to maintain the quality and range of our provision and keep delivering everything our communities want and deserve. Whether that’s helping people be more physically active through our leisure facilities and services, providing a diverse range of cultural and artistic events, or delivering economic benefit through hosting major conferences, exhibitions, and events.”
Read BH Live’s annual accounts on the Companies House website.
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
For more information about BH Live please contact:
Elizabeth Symmons, PR, Communications and Marketing Manager
E: press.office@bhlive.org.uk
T: (01202) 055562
About BH Live
BH Live is a leading operator of leisure and event venues; a registered charity and social enterprise that designs and builds engaging experiences to inspire people and enrich lives.
Our social objectives are to:
- Encourage more people to take part in physical activity – by providing leisure facilities to encourage active communities and improve health and wellbeing.
- Attract bigger entertainment audiences – with a diverse range of cultural and artistic events that appeal to a wide variety of tastes.
- Deliver economic benefit – by hosting major conferences, exhibitions and events that benefit the local, regional and international economy.
With more than five million visits a year we are changing lives and are at the heart of the UK’s growing social economy.
For more visit bhlive.org.uk.
Get social with us: LinkedIn and Twitter @BHLIVE_UK Facebook @SocialEnterpriseBHLive