Leisure Centre Budget Planning: Put a Number on What You Can’t See
I asked a university how many procedures they had. They said “loads”, because they didn’t know. I pointed out the university had been around for over 500 years and asked when they thought they’d find out. We laughed. Then we both stopped, because that’s a leisure centre budget planning problem as much as a compliance one. You can’t put a cost on what you can’t see, and you can’t tell finance what it costs you to find out. OpsPal licences signed before the end of November are 10% off, which makes now a sensible time to find out.
Where leisure centre budget planning misses the cost
Budget meetings reward whatever has an invoice attached. A software licence has one. The overdue risk assessment doesn’t. Neither does the training certificate that expired in September nor the fortnight a manager loses pulling together evidence for an audit.
Those are real costs. They just never get a line. So the licence ends up looking like the only expense on the table, when it’s really the only one you can see the edges of.
One of our Scottish customers showed this. Its annual insurance audit form used to take nearly two weeks to complete. This year it took half a day, and the insurer took 5% off the quote. Nobody had budgeted for that fortnight of management time. Nobody had budgeted for the discount either. I can’t promise your insurer will do the same, but it shows how much sits off the page. Ask your own team what the equivalent is on your site: the form, the audit, the inspection visit. Find out how many person-days it takes and put a figure on it. Then put that figure next to the licence price and see which one looks bigger.
The HSE sets out three steps for risk assessment: find the hazards, judge the risk, and control it. Doing that is one conversation. Showing it quickly to an insurer or an assessor is another.
The number to take to the budget meeting
Leisure centre budget planning works best when finance sees one small number per person, not one large number per year. Here are the figures, all ex-VAT. The main site is £8,500, and each medium add-on site is £1,500, so the five-site column is a main site plus four add-ons.
|
Single site (50 staff) |
Five sites (250 staff) |
| List price per year |
£6,500 |
£14,500 |
| With 10% off, signed before the end of November |
£5,850 |
£13,050 |
| Cost per person per day, with the offer |
32.1p |
14.3p |
| Cost per person per year, with the offer |
£117 |
£52.20 |
| Members are to cover it at £38 a month, with the offer |
13 |
29 |
A Freddo is 30p or more. So the single-site price is about one Freddo per person per day, and at five sites it’s under half of one. That’s the sentence to give your finance director. It also gives your leisure centre budget planning a fair comparison: the same pennies, against the hours you currently spend finding things out. If the annual payment is the sticking point, you can pay monthly or quarterly instead.
The member sum is simple. At £38 a month, one member is worth £456 a year. £5,850 ÷ £456 is 12.8, so keep 13 members for the year, and a single-site licence is covered. Five sites at £13,050 need 29, about six per site. I’m not promising OpsPal retains a set number of members. I’m saying that’s the bar.
Three questions to answer before you sign off the budget
These are the cheapest leisure centre budget planning you’ll do this year. They cost nothing, and they’ll tell you what you’re really spending.
- Who can tell you right now, without ringing anyone, what’s overdue? On OpsPal, risk assessments go amber 30 days before review and red once overdue, and the dashboard shows it at a glance.
- How many hours did your last accreditation or insurance audit take to prepare? Time it honestly. DLR Leisure in Dublin counted 180 hours across three managers before each assessment. That’s their own estimate, but it’s the kind of number that changes a budget conversation.
- When do your staff’s qualifications expire? The training matrix flags anything expiring within 90 days in amber. January is the membership rush, so the worst time to find a gap is the week you need everyone on poolside. Our guide to preparing for the January membership rush covers the rest.
If you can’t answer all three in under a minute, you’ve found your budget line.
Monday Morning Action
Ask your team how many procedures you have. Write the number down. If the answer is “loads”, that’s your budget line.
Then do the two sums above with your own staff numbers and average membership fee, and build them into your leisure centre budget planning pack before the end of November. If you want a second pair of eyes on the maths, book a demo. Sign before the end of November, and it’s 10% off the licence fee.
Sources
- The Star, “Cadbury shrinks Freddo multipacks – with shoppers getting even less for their money”, 11 June 2025. https://www.thestar.co.uk/lifestyle/food-and-drink/cadbury-shrinks-freddo-multipacks-5172850
- Health and Safety Executive, “Managing risks and risk assessment at work: Overview”. https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/risk/index.htm
- OpsPal, “DLR Leisure: Leisure Accreditation Software” case study, 2025. https://opspal.co.uk/case-study/leisure-accreditation-software/
- OpsPal pricing (£6,500 single site, £8,500 main site, £1,500 medium add-on, 10% offer, £38 average membership fee): supplied by Craig Campbell, 13 October 2026.
- Scottish customer insurance audit result: supplied by Craig Campbell, 13 October 2026 (client-reported).
- University procedures anecdote: Craig Campbell’s voice profile (OpsPal shared references).
