The upgraded gym at Fairfield Leisure is open. It is the visible part of £923,000 the operator promised Dartford's council for a five-year contract extension.
The gym at Fairfield Leisure has reopened after a refit, and the operator has published the list of what went in. It is the first visible return on a deal Dartford Borough Council signed last year, in which Places Leisure promised £923,000 of investment in the centre in exchange for keeping the contract.
Places Leisure says it has “listened to our Members feedback” and made “a huge investment in our gym”. The kit it lists (Places Leisure):
- new cardio machines with 16 inch touchscreen entertainment consoles
- two new Powermills
- an expanded free weights area with half racks, barbell stations and adjustable benches
- Glute Drive and Hack Squat machines
- plate-loaded leg press, chest press, shoulder press and seated row
- Pulse accessible fixed-strength machines with swing-away seats
- cable training stations with dual adjustable pulleys
- a functional training zone with a rig and a push and pull sled
- a dedicated core training and stretching space
Two hubs are new. An EGYM hub does body composition analysis and a “BioAge” score comparing your strength, flexibility, cardio and metabolism against typical values for your age. A BOX12 hub runs a 36 minute session of twelve three minute rounds mixing boxing and functional fitness.
The deal behind it
Fairfield is owned by Dartford Borough Council and run under contract by Places for People Leisure Management Limited. The council signed a ten year contract on 13 February 2016, and it expired on 13 February 2026.
The contract allowed one option: a five year extension. Cabinet took that option on 24 April 2025, resolving to “approve a five-year extension on Places for People Leisure Management Limited’s contract for the running of Fairfield Leisure Centre” (Cabinet, item 149). That runs the arrangement to February 2031.
The £923,000 was the price of it. The officers’ report put it plainly: Places Leisure “are keen to extend the contract for five years. In return, they are looking to make a substantial investment into the facility of £923k” (Fairfield Leisure Centre Contract Extension, Cabinet, 24 April 2025).
Three things about that money are worth knowing:
- It covers more than the gym. The report lists new fitness equipment, upgraded IT infrastructure, pool inflatables, new branding and signage, café furniture, and improvements to the wetside and gym changing rooms
- The council keeps it. Apart from the IT assets, “the benefit of this investment will remain with the Council at the end of the extension period”
- Places Leisure is borrowing to pay for it and, the report says, “absorbing the cost of borrowing rather than passing this on to the Council through a reduced management fee”
When a Cabinet member asked about a longer extension, the Chief Officer and Director of Corporate Services said the existing contract only offered five years, and any change “would have to be brought back to Cabinet for consideration”.
What the council pays
The council pays Places Leisure a fixed management fee and the operator carries the risk on income. The report set the fee at £732,000 in the first year of the extension, rising to £756,000 by year five, with indexation capped at 2.5%. For comparison, the 2024/25 budget for the fee was £758,000, so the extension represents a small drop.
Energy is handled separately. A decarbonisation project has already put air source heat pumps, solar thermal panels for the pools and solar photovoltaic panels into the centre, with the gas boilers due out. The system was too new to benchmark, so the extension allows a review after a full year. The modelled budget is £140,000 a year, which the report notes is about £70,000 a year lower than energy costs before the works. Places Leisure carries the risk on how much energy is used; the council carries the risk on what it costs.
What the investment was meant to fix
The report is unusually frank about the state of the building. It records customer complaints about “cleaning standards, temperatures, peeling paintwork and drainage issues”, and says a council visit found the same problems plus “some accessibility issues”.
By the time Cabinet met, some of it had been dealt with:
- drainage work done across all the toilets and changing areas
- peeling paint stripped and walls prepared, with redecorating to follow the sign-off of the decarbonisation works
- two deep clean sessions carried out
- an additional cleaner recruited
Officers put the complaints in context: eight complaints in March, against more than 45,000 visits that month.
Members were not entirely reassured. The Chairman asked whether more could be done “to restore customer confidence” and suggested a user-experience feedback group that councillors could feed into. The Director of Growth and Community said the council’s new in-house property team was already doing regular inspections and mystery shopper visits, but accepted that professional inspections are “less emotive than the experience of leisure users”.
The numbers behind the refit
The gym is where the centre has lost the most ground, which is why the fitness equipment took the bulk of the spend. Club Live memberships stood at about 3,000 when the report was written, against 3,700 before the pandemic. Swim memberships were around 560, against 650 pre-Covid, though that was up from 470 in March 2023 after swimming prices were cut.
Swimming lessons are the exception, and they are a genuine success. Numbers have gone from about 1,600 before Covid to 2,700, which the report says puts Fairfield in the top five centres for swimming lesson numbers across Places Leisure’s contracts.
The council’s report attributes the gym decline partly to habits formed in lockdown: online classes mean “some people are preferring to continue exercising in this way rather than returning to the gym”. It also notes the fall is not unique to Dartford but has been seen “across the Places Leisure estate and by other leisure providers”.
The reorganisation argument, which has just changed
One line in the April 2025 report reads differently this week. Setting out why the council should extend rather than retender, officers warned that “the uncertainty around local government reorganisation may also deter a new provider who may be concerned whether leisure provision would continue to be a priority for a new unitary authority”.
At the time, that uncertainty pointed one way. Since then ministers decided in July that Dartford would be merged into a North Kent unitary from April 2028, and then, on 7 September 2026, paused the whole programme and told councils to stop implementing it. We have covered that separately. The five-year extension now runs past both the abolition date that was proposed and the review that has suspended it, so whoever ends up owning Fairfield inherits the contract either way.
What it means for you
- The upgraded gym is open now. Places Leisure invites members to “come and see the improvements for yourself”
- The equipment stays with the council. If the operator changes in 2031, the kit does not leave with it
- Accessibility was part of the brief. The Pulse fixed-strength machines with swing-away seats are designed for that, and the council flagged accessibility issues at the site in 2025
- If standards slip, there is a route. The council holds regular performance meetings with Places Leisure over the extension period, and councillors asked for user experience to feed into them
- Places Leisure notes that the images on its announcement “are indicative only and may be subject to change”
Sources
- Places Leisure: Gym upgrade at Fairfield Leisure, for the equipment list, the EGYM and BOX12 hubs and the operator’s own description of the investment
- Fairfield Leisure Centre Contract Extension, report to Dartford Borough Council Cabinet, 24 April 2025, for the £923k investment and what it covers, the 13 February 2016 contract and its February 2026 expiry, the £732,000 to £756,000 management fee and 2.5% indexation cap, the £758,000 2024/25 budget, the £140,000 energy benchmark and the decarbonisation works, the membership and swimming lesson numbers, the customer complaints and the reorganisation argument
- Cabinet agenda item 149, 24 April 2025, for the minutes, the resolution approving the five-year extension, the eight complaints against 45,000 visits, and the exchange about a longer extension and user feedback
Reported on 8 September 2026 from the operator’s own announcement and the council’s own committee record. Every figure above is drawn from those published documents.
Have your say