Are council gyms subsidised?

bigmaz

Just wondering if anyone knows the answer to this? My local gym is not much bigger than my living room, and the facilities are not that great, and it costs £38/m for a membership, its shocking. Fair enough if it was a decent size and good equipment, but its far from it.

Maybe it depends on the council? Not sure.

floss2

Council employees may get a discount, but it will depend on the council. Is it the only gym they have? Is it a small local council?

Have you actually spoken to anyone about it? Do they know that members are unhappy with the facilities? or is it that they do not have the money to improve it with the government funding cuts?

Thomas_Hardy

It depends - my local one used to be council run and subsidised, but now it is privately run and non subsidised. Even the GP exercise referral scheme does not receive any funding

tanith

We have several Leisure centres with gyms locally they are fab I guess we are lucky, they also have decent pools. Our council have a scheme for local people in certain categories to get a half price leisure pass. Children , unemployed, disabled being among those who qualify.

Fire_Fox

bigmaz wrote: »

Just wondering if anyone knows the answer to this? My local gym is not much bigger than my living room, and the facilities are not that great, and it costs £38/m for a membership, its shocking. Fair enough if it was a decent size and good equipment, but its far from it.

Maybe it depends on the council? Not sure.

Usually are non profit making: any profits are spent on equipment, staff training or community sports/ fitness services including those for children, elderly or disabled. Is it just a gym or a gym with pool? Pools are INCREDIBLY expensive to run. And is it just the one gym or part of a group of leisure centres/ fitness facilities run by your council? They may not be profit or loss making individually but as a group.

University gyms are a good alternative, they tend to be reasonably priced and again non profit making. Sometimes the student and staff memberships are subsidised, public are not.

Bigmoney2

My local council gyms charge £5.95 to use the fitness suite, or free with £35 a month contract.

Local no frills gym is 15.99 a month (no contract), another non chain gym (very small) is £3 a visit.

So local council gym comes out the more expensive.

jenniewb

My local gym offers a monthly contract for the grand sum of £44 a month (or it did last time I checked: could well be more then this). For this you get to share a very dirty changing room with all members of the same sex public of whatever age (child, teenagers and local schools visiting for their weekly lessons). Pool use is not always possible due to children's lesson being out first-evening classes included and then there's the local Uni....

Sauna use costs extra, booking classes isn't easy as classes book up a week in advance some seasons and the showers? spriz for 10 seconds (and that is no exaggeration: I used to time them so I knew when to re-press the button) showers are covered in mould and before you suggest cleaning...this gym doesn't seem to do cleaning things like showers, it just has a massive refurbishment every 2 years when the gym shuts for 2 weeks at a time -and no you don't get your membership fee refunded during this time.

I just went to a chained gym: free towels, free saunas AND steam rooms! Free hairdryers -and more then one of them, no sharing the gym with 14-15 year olds who don't want to be there and class bookings are fairer: you have to be there to attend, not book a week in advance then not turn up!

Check elsewhere, if you don't mind paying a little more you get back a far better service and do seem to get what you pay for in comparison. The reason my local gym is so expensive is that there are no chained gyms very close so there is no real competition for them, so they (over) charge what they like.

bigmaz

jenniewb wrote: »

My local gym offers a monthly contract for the grand sum of £44 a month (or it did last time I checked: could well be more then this). For this you get to share a very dirty changing room with all members of the same sex public of whatever age (child, teenagers and local schools visiting for their weekly lessons). Pool use is not always possible due to children's lesson being out first-evening classes included and then there's the local Uni....

Sauna use costs extra, booking classes isn't easy as classes book up a week in advance some seasons and the showers? spriz for 10 seconds (and that is no exaggeration: I used to time them so I knew when to re-press the button) showers are covered in mould and before you suggest cleaning...this gym doesn't seem to do cleaning things like showers, it just has a massive refurbishment every 2 years when the gym shuts for 2 weeks at a time -and no you don't get your membership fee refunded during this time.

I just went to a chained gym: free towels, free saunas AND steam rooms! Free hairdryers -and more then one of them, no sharing the gym with 14-15 year olds who don't want to be there and class bookings are fairer: you have to be there to attend, not book a week in advance then not turn up!

Check elsewhere, if you don't mind paying a little more you get back a far better service and do seem to get what you pay for in comparison. The reason my local gym is so expensive is that there are no chained gyms very close so there is no real competition for them, so they (over) charge what they like.

That is exactly like the council gym where we are, dirty and not well run, and similar to you there is no competition, so people pay it. I work in the centre of Glasgow, and the LA Fitness round the corner is £1 more per month, and it is amazing. I am currently in email conversation about it with someone from the council, but they keep saying its good value for money, lol!! Suppose they have to say that :P