Our purpose
Creating active places and healthy people
Our services
Creating active places and healthy people for communities to thrive
As part of Places for People, we are one of the UK's leading social enterprises, welcoming over a million members to around 100 health and wellbeing facilities across the nation annually.
We aim to enlighten our communities about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle in collaboration with local authorities, customers and partners both within our thriving community hubs and out in the wider community.
By understanding the needs of the community we aim to create behavioural changes which improve the physical and mental wellbeing of individuals and social wellbeing of the collective.
An award winning organisation...
In conjunction with becoming the UK's leading health and wellbeing enabler, we managed to take home three awards at one of the leisure industries most prestigious award ceremonies.
We are so proud to be named the 2023 ukactive Organisation of the Year, being recognised to have the highest level of performance, impact and sustainability out of all organisations shortlisted for the ukactive awards.
Additionally, we won the Equality, Diversity, & Inclusion Award for our Big Sister Project, and our Operations Director took home the Outstanding Leadership Award!
Our facilities
Our vibrant and attractive spaces encourage communities to play sport, socialise and engage in physical activity. Across the country our centres provide a broad variety of spaces for their communities, including;
- 59 swimming facilities
- 71 top class gyms
- 100+ group workout spaces
- 22 places to play squash
- 51 sports halls
- We even have libraries, banks, GP surgeries and pottery courses operating from our sites!
Our facilities are about more than just health and fitness. By welcoming clubs, charities and societies to exploit the space available they can become the beating heart of the community.
Find your place
We’ve got over 100 centres nationwide. Find your nearest place.
Our social value
We love nothing more than seeing the impact that our people and facilities have on our communities. From guiding a child through their first strokes in the water to offering a place where goals are established, safe spaces are offered and health in every form is promoted. We offer tangible rewards.
As a social enterprise we are passionate about generating social value for the communities we serve. Using the Moving Communites Social Value Calculator, which assesses the local impact on health, education, subjective wellbeing and crime, Places Leisure generated over £160m of social value in FY 2024-25.
Helping our communities
All that we do is done to have an impact on the communities that we serve. Across our facilities our teams have worked alongside their communities to create impact in a variety of ways.
Read about just some of projects launched within our centres below.
Accessibility
We are determined to make our centres community hubs, welcoming and inclusive for everyone. That is why we are constantly looking at ways to make our leisure centres more accessible.
We are lucky enough to have a dedicated Non-Executive Director, Richard Cartwright, who gives up his spare time to visit our centres and advise on ways we can improve accessibility for all users. Having sustained a high-level spinal cord injury in 2006, his insight is invaluable. Our Leisure Accessibility Group also brings together a range of experts from across the business to address identified needs, linking into the wider Inclusion and Belonging groups operating across Places for People.
Informed by the work done by Richard and more formal audit reports produced at our request by AccessAble, we can make impactful changes and provide in depth information about access, additional facilities and other accessibility features. For those with additional needs, the home page for each of our centres displays the accessibility features available. If you feel you may need assistance outside that listed, please do not hesitate to contact one of our friendly teams who will do all they can to help you.
Sustainability
At Places Leisure we are fully aware of our responsibility to ensure the environmental impact of centres is minimised. By their very nature, leisure centres consume large amounts of energy and omit significant carbon emissions.
Our strategy delivers fantastic community-led activities in the most environmentally responsible way.
Our commitment to reducing energy consumption and improving our green credentials through good practice and staff awareness has already contributed to around 20% in energy savings and reduced CO2 emissions by 11000 tonnes. We are determined to do more and have set ourselves an ambitious target to work with our local authority partners to drive towards a net zero target by 2035.
Design and build
Over the last 12 years we have designed and constructed 17 new state-of-the-art leisure facilities. We work closely alongside a dedicated team of architects, project managers, construction companies and subcontractors to offer local authorities ‘One Complete Solution’ and help bring their vision for the site to life.
Take a look at some of our latest facilities.
Our partners
We work closely with a range of partners from national governing bodies, sporting partners and community partners to deliver a service that we can be proud of and that meets the needs of our communities.
Our communities are based all around the country. Currently, Places Leisure works with 33 local authorities, helping to create active places for communities to thrive.
Our local authority partners
We're proud to work with a large number of local authorities across the country. Please see our full list of partners below.
Our partners
In order to maximise the good we are able to bring to our communities we work with a wide range of sport, fitness and health and wellbeing bodies.
Please see a list of just some of the organisations we are proud to work alongside:
Latest news
Find out about all that is happening around our centres and in our community.