The Oval Bebington, Cheshire, (sometimes referred to as the Bebington Oval and Port Sunlight) is a municipal athletics stadium with a sports hall in Bebington, Merseyside. It opened in 1973 and its first centre manager was Denis Woodman, who became Director of the Countryside & Recreation Division, Cheshire CC, and Chairman of the Association of […]
The late Alec Collins was an early Leisure Director for Macclesfield Borough Council from Local Government Re-organisation in 1974. He brought his administrative and management experience as a Town Council Clerk to recreation management. His wartime service was in the RAF, where he combined his navigation skills with piano playing, performing with many of the […]
My initial view as an assessor at the beginning of the award, was the difficulty of comparing the management of centres that were very different e.g. a large town centre facility with a small rural. Indeed, at one stage there was a discussion about the desirability of having different categories. The award then moved on […]
I started my first job as a sports director in 1964 when I was appointed by Leeds City Council as Principal of the Leeds Athletic Institute. The council embarked on an innovative scheme and set up an old Victorian “E shaped” school as a sports activity centre. It’s design provided three large halls and twelve […]
The John Hirn Construction low cost sports centre model was selected by Salisbury District Council in 1992 to meet the needs of the Districts Western Parishes. The late Michael Norrish, Managing Director of John Hirn had been developing an all timber sports centre model very successfully in Southern England. Tisbury and District Sports Centre had […]
Recollections of the Early Years (March 12th, 1971 – April 2nd, 1978) The Project The Gamechangers In 1960 Sir John Wolfenden drew national attention to “the serious shortage of facilities for indoor games and sports”. His report (Sport and the Community) persuaded many local authorities to plan for the “greatest challenge of the seventies”. […]
Given the scarcity of new leisure and community sports building in the early 21st Century, it almost seems remarkable that there was a time when there was a demand for multiple standardised sports buildings to meet the growing demands of communities. However, that was the situation in the early 1980’s when Local Authorities and other […]
ARM News played a key role in the formative years of recreation management from 1970 to 1982. It is an amazing chronicle of – the practicalities of sports centre management in the first decade of centres, of the developing recreation management scene, and of the important character and role of the Association of Recreation Managers […]
Previous chapters, and link, including National Centres by John Birch and the Research Study by Mike Fitzjohn & Malcolm Tungatt, have highlighted the role of the national Sports Councils including the amount of policy and technical advice that they published and was also provided by staff. This supplement records the roles of the Regional Offices […]
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