HELP Save Our Leisure Services

Help support the campaign so YOUR council manages the services for YOU, your FAMILY, your FRIENDS and your  COMMUNITY.

Neath Port Talbot  UNISON are petitioning NPTCBC Councillors to support the proposal for the borough leisure services and facilities to be managed by the Council. The final decision on the future of these vital services falls to them, our elected members.

Help us make our leisure services a shining example of community service provision. The long-term recovery from the pandemic has rightly made the health and wellbeing of our communities a priority for the Welsh Government and the Labour Party. What could be better than having services that can help us all, managed by people who know us, the people who know what we want, what we need, and can provide this as a priority?

The services were outsourced to the Celtic Leisure Trust over twenty years ago and this contract ends in October 2021 following a six-month extension due to the pandemic. This gives the perfect opportunity for the Council to take back control of these vital services. The Council is held by a Labour administration, with the policy of the Welsh Labour Party to recommend the return of services to local authority management and ownership.

We don’t want to see these vital services, so important for our health and wellbeing, managed by a centralised organisation or company. If Councillors don’t act, the result could be that OUR services are managed from another borough, region or even country, at the detriment to our own communities.

Over the past years, the reassurances given by Celtic Leisure Trust management to the staff were not kept. This has resulted in a demoralised workforce, a two-tier workforce between management and frontline staff with an inflated senior management salary structure, the introduction of zero hour and casual contracts.  We need to take ownership of our OWN service provision within our OWN communities.

NPT Councillors have already signed up to the Welsh Government’s Ethical Employment in Supply Chains Policy, which ensures a holistic view must be taken when commissioning services for our county borough. Appropriate consideration must be awarded to the conditions of this policy when the members’ report comes before them. We would implore our elected representatives to return the services back to the management of the Council. 

Help support the campaign so YOUR council manages the services for YOU, your FAMILY, your FRIENDS and your COMMUNITY.

In solidarity,

UNISON Neath Port Talbot Branch