Leisure services firm Serco profits up after off-loading parts of business
The company that runs leisure centres across Shropshire has reported rising profits as it tries to turn around its business.
Serco, which abandoned a plan to sell its contract to manage centres for Shropshire Council, saw revenue fall by 15 per cent as it offloaded unwanted parts of the business.
But that helped it deliver a 14 per cent rise in trading profit to £71.7 million.
"Whilst we expect to see potholes on the way, we are making good progress on the implementation of our strategy, underlined by our growing pipeline of new bids," said chief executive Rupert Soames.
"We have removed some £550 million from our operating costs, and at the same time we have been investing in our infrastructure, processes and capability."
In the division which covers UK local and regional government contracts, including the leisure contract for centres at the Quarry Leisure Centre and Sports Village in Shrewsbury, the new Oswestry Leisure Centre, and other centres in Market Drayton and Whitchurch, revenue fell by 19 per cent to £376.7 million.
That decline was mainly driven by the loss of other contracts unrelated to the leisure centres.
Serco's plan to offload the centres – as well as others it runs across the country – was cut short in 2015, but still cost it £300,000 in the six months to June 30.
Its plans for new bids over the next two years include five for unnamed council's environmental services and hospitals management. Mr Soames added: "Performance for the first half of the year has been better than we expected.
"Although much of the improvement came from items that will not recur, it reflects the result of a lot of hard work and successful resolution of a number of commercial issues.
"Since our last update in May, our trading performance and cost savings are tracking slightly ahead of plan, and recent foreign exchange movements have increased the value in sterling of our overseas earnings."
