hese are unprecedented times for leisure trusts, which are operating in incredibly challenging conditions: successive funding cuts on the one hand, and on the other increasing demand for wider services to meet the changing health and wellbeing landscape, not to mention the need to invest in facilities to ensure they meet the demands of modern users.

Set against this backdrop, we’ve seen the emergence of large-scale trusts operating more than 100 sites. Benefiting from economies of scale and big balance sheets, such ‘mega trusts’ pose a threat to small, independent trusts when competing for tenders, with a number of smaller trusts joining the bigger players to survive.

So what does this mean for the industry? Are large-scale trusts best placed to serve local authorities? Or does the dominance of these organisations spell a future of homogeneity and the end of localism? Can both large and small trust happily co-exist to deliver the health and wellbeing agenda?