Demand for High Life Highland services expected to rise over winter, chief executive believes as region recovers from Covid-19 lockdown
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DEMAND for leisure and other High Life Highland services is expected to rise over the darker winter months – and its boss has vowed that ensuring safe access for all is a “key driver” for his team during the pandemic.
Speaking in the second of an exclusive two-part interview, the organisation’s chief executive Steve Walsh said staff had been working hard to ensure as many people as possible have access to its sites during Covid restrictions.
Acknowledging that this has been a challenge for leisure facilities across Scotland, he said that safety was a top priority but it also places high importance on ensuring people continue to have access for their own physical and mental wellbeing.
“It’s about trying to encourage people back, and the dark nights are coming in so we do expect demand to go up, and our job is to try to keep as many people happy, but afford as many the opportunity as we can as well,” he said.
“The feedback we’ve had from customers – it’s been incredibly positive. Mainly they feel safe, they feel reassured and they can come into our facilities, and although we’ve got physical distancing in place, what people are really enjoying is the social interaction so our classes have been the busiest of all of our services.
“The gym is gradually building and swimming is gradually building, but our classes have been very busy. And it’s not just those that body pump and stuff, you know, it’s line dancing, tai chi... our programme for slightly more mature people has been really popular. Lots of these people, they’ve been isolated for a long time.”
He is also determined to ensure that no one misses out on access. As well as running some classes on a fortnightly rotation to increase the number that can come back, he added: “It’s just about trying to be agile, listening to customers and trying to cater for as many as we can – but we need to be safe.”
He added that the organisation was also pointing people towards other classes and leisure activities if their preferred ones were fully booked: “Hopefully if someone can’t get into swimming we can offer them something else. They can still come and enjoy our facilities.”
And he added that the need to ensure people struggling financially still have access is another “key driver” for his team.
“We are a charity and although our Bounceback [campaign] is about making sure that we are viable financially, we are proud of the fact that we have a budget membership scheme where those families who might be struggling can have access to all of our facilities.
“That’s something that we are absolutely proud of and will continue to do, because High Life Highland is about participation and opportunity at an affordable price. That’s how we make sure there are no huge inequality issues, as we come out of this, when it comes to physical and mental health and wellbeing.”
Mr Walsh also said that long-running efforts to improve facilities were also continuing despite Covid. These have included newly installed floodlights at the flagship Inverness Leisure site’s running track so that athletes have access to the full 400m track’s capacity during winter.
“It’s about trying to encourage people back, and the dark nights are coming in so we do expect demand to go up, and our job is to try to keep as many people happy, but afford as many the opportunity as we can as well."
And he also flagged up a new state-of-the-art strength conditioning suite which will be complete by the end of November, and will mean that potential elite Highland athletes will not have to travel south for some key training facilities.
“It’s a massive, massive investment into the Highlands, for all our young athletes,” he added.
