Does T.U.P.E. cover Membership of gyms

Bill_Payer9002

I joined a City Council gym run a seperate company with charity status in 2015.  In 2020 the company ran into financial hardship during pandemic and terminated their Council contract, they manage eight leisure centres with gyms, 10 libraries, a theatre and a museum – all owned by the council.  A 90 day consultation took place to enable all staff etc to be TUPE'd over to a new company set up by the City Council, with the Council writing off the debts accrued.

Members were informed of the changes and told the only noteable change would be members direct debits moving from Charity A to Charity B on our bank statements.

There are approx 6,000+ members across all gyms.

When I joined in 2015 I was promised a price for life membership as were all members of Charity A.

Two years later Charity B are saying  "Sadly, Charity A no longer exists and Charity B have no legal obligation to honour any offers previously made by the Trust.

Charity B do value your membership and loyalty to our leisure venues, however, financially we cannot afford to continue offering memberships at the Price for Life offer rate.  

We understand that this is disappointing, which is why we have only made a very small price increase to minimise the financial impact to you as much as possible.

We sincerely hope that you will continue to use our venues and enjoy your membership with us, our commitment to our members remains a priority.

Is this legal, as long standing members do we have rights similar to the staff who have had their terms and conditions of their contracts of employment honoured by Charity B????

TELLIT01

Presumably Charity A were unable to create an operating surplus with their fixed for life deal so disposed of the gym.  I think TUPE applies to employment rights, not membership rights, although I may be wrong. 

Whilst annoying, I suspect the options are (1) accept the increase (2) refuse to pay and potentially have the gym go bust.

DullGreyGuy

TUPE = Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)

You are a member not an employee so not covered by TUPE in any circumstances.

Even if TUPE doesn't apply contract law still does and therefore you would need to understand 1) who your original contract was with  2) exactly what happened between the three parties (council, original company and new company). Often a new company will buy certain assets from an insolvent one and not the company itself which does mean there is no obligations of the new company to the old company's customers. However in this case you have continued to make payment and use the facilities and so some form of contract does exist, just proving the terms of that contract may be difficult if you didn't sign anything at the point of change (which may not be necessary if your contract is with the council and not the charities)

Ditzy_Mitzy

T.U.P.E.  stands for 'transfer under previous employment' and is relevant to employees being moved to a new employer with retention of the existing conditions.  It has no relevance to non-employment contracts, as simple membership of a gym will be.  

The answer to the OP's question is 'probably not'.  I assume that the gym membership will have been renewed at some point in the past two years; a new terms and conditions document is likely to have been issued at the very least.  Has any of that happened?  

I have experienced something similar from the other side, in that a company I have worked for acquired another that had gone bust and were forced to renege on the acquired party's 'lifetime offers'.  Much of the reason the acquired firm went bust was that the 'lifetime offers' were entirely uneconomical to operate.  

DullGreyGuy

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

T.U.P.E.  stands for 'transfer under previous employment' 

 acas.org.uk/employee-rights-during-a-tupe-transfer 

TUPE stands for Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)

Ditzy_Mitzy

DullGreyGuy said:

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

T.U.P.E.  stands for 'transfer under previous employment' 

 acas.org.uk/employee-rights-during-a-tupe-transfer 

TUPE stands for Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)

That's interesting, I've been told otherwise but must have been a colloquialism.  Meaning is virtually the same, however.

Andy_L

TELLIT01 said:

Presumably Charity A were unable to create an operating surplus with their fixed for life deal so disposed of the gym.  I think TUPE applies to employment rights, not membership rights, although I may be wrong. 

Whilst annoying, I suspect the options are (1) accept the increase (2) refuse to pay and potentially have the gym go bust.

You're correct


"TUPE regulations protect employees' rights when:

• an organisation, or part of it, transfers from one employer to another
• a service transfers to a new provider, for example when another company takes over the contract for office cleaning"

https://www.acas.org.uk/tupe

Exodi

I mean surely you have to also consider the moral aspect OP.

The previous charity has been unable to stay afloat and folded, the new charity has openly admitted that they can not afford to continue memberships at the previous rate but are only making only a vew small increase to stay buoyant.

And your first reaction is try force them to abide by the terms that drove the first charity into liquidation?

Do you think the second charity is lying about the reason for the increase? Otherwise are you not concerned that if they honoured this price they would likely share exactly the same fate as the first charity?

Exodi

And sorry, as others have pointed out with regards to the TUPE misappropriation, this thread probably belongs in the Spending & Discounts > Consumer Rights subforum, it's not related to employment.

Bill_Payer9002

TELLIT01 said:

Presumably Charity A were unable to create an operating surplus with their fixed for life deal so disposed of the gym.  I think TUPE applies to employment rights, not membership rights, although I may be wrong. 

Whilst annoying, I suspect the options are (1) accept the increase (2) refuse to pay and potentially have the gym go bust.

Far from that, the gym was subsidising the 10 Libraries Theatre and museum etc......

"Gym usage drives the bulk of the income to support our range of services," Charity A said in a statement.

This was at the time of first lockdown, they lost all income streams (Prior to Furlough) asked Council for help, who refused as they were in the same boat.........

DullGreyGuy

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

T.U.P.E.  stands for 'transfer under previous employment' 

 acas.org.uk/employee-rights-during-a-tupe-transfer 

TUPE stands for Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment)

That's interesting, I've been told otherwise but must have been a colloquialism.  Meaning is virtually the same, however.

As is often the case, its an acronym of the law that creates it, so in full Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006. 

Its funny how acronyms can develop alternative expansions that mean the same thing... in my world of insurance I am dealing with a LPT which is normally a Loss Portfolio Transfer however my client calls it a Legacy Portfolio Transfer... exactly the same thing, same acronym but different words... guess they dont like the connotations of the "loss" and prefer it to just be "legacy" - which it always will be in this type of deal.