A NEW year offer encouraging people to “join for a coin” at leisure centres across Northumberland has prompted record-breaking results.

The chief executive of Active Northumberland claims 734 new people have signed up for year-long memberships with the county council’s leisure management arm since the offer to get the first month for just £1 was launched on January 1.

Lorraine Dewison told a meeting of the county council’s west area committee, held in Corbridge on Tuesday, that the organisation’s first ever marketing campaign was the first step towards it becoming more commercial.

“Sadly, prices hadn’t changed too much for a significant period of time when I took over in June,” she said.

“We found that members had sometimes joined 20 years ago and their fees had never changed. So we had some people using the same facilities paying anything from £11 to £32 – and even £40 in some of the newer centres.”

Mrs Dewison said previous memberships had also allowed leisure centre users to cancel their direct debits when they went on holiday and re-start them when they returned, while the Active Card was removed because the system was “being abused”.

“We just couldn’t continue to operate like that. We have the same overheads to pay each month and have had to look to the private sector and become much smarter in what we do,” she explained.

“The council cannot continue to provide the subsidy it has in the past.”

This led to the introduction of a widely-criticised new pricing structure on November 1, which was aimed at making memberships fairer across the board, but left many people in Tynedale facing huge price hikes.

And Mrs Dewison admitted that the changes had prompted a lot of “movement” in members, with many leaving, but later coming back after realising the charges still represented value for money.

She said figures showed there had been 956 new members in November 2016, compared with just 580 in the same month the previous year.

Coun. Alan Sharp, who represents the Haydon and Hadrian ward, said he’d never known the county’s leisure centres operate without financial help.

“There was a clear lack of communication and consultation on these changes which could have avoided some of the issues,” he said.

“How do you see the business plan going?”

Mrs Dewison said: “It’s going to be a huge challenge, but these initial figures from our first ever campaign are record breaking for us, and show it can be done.”

She added: “Our priority has always been to keep centres open and to protect jobs and services, at a time when a lot of other local authorities have closed leisure provision.”