October Launch for ActiveIslands Scheme

Folk living on Orkney's inner and outer isles are set to benefit from a new membership option under Orkney's ActiveLife scheme.

ActiveIslands will give islanders access to gym facilities and fitness classes on their specific island for £12.50 for month or £17.50 for a family. Budget memberships are also available at a cost of 50p per activity.

Islanders will still have the option to take out a full ActiveLife membership, giving them access to a full range of facilities across Orkney at a monthly cost of £19.50 for an individual or £29.50 for a family.

ActiveIslands will launch on October 14, when anyone wanting to sign up will be able to visit their local Healthy Living Centre for an application form and more information.

The ActiveLife membership scheme was launched in January 2017 and a six month review has recently been carried out to identify potential improvements to the scheme.

As well as the ActiveIslands scheme a number of other changes have been identified including:

• Members will be able to freeze their membership for up to two months with a doctor's line.
• The time between taking out memberships after a cancellation has been reduced from six months to three months.
• Classes cancelled at short notice by members will now result in members being charged the full cost of the class (rather than the previous flat rate of £2) – however, the notice required has been reduced from 12 hours to six hours to allow a bit more flexibility for members for unforeseen circumstances such as illness, etc.
• Single court activities will continue to be included in the scheme.

These changes will also take effect from October 14.

Garry Burton is Orkney Islands Council's Sport and Leisure Manager. He said: "Active Life is doing exactly what it was developed for which is to get 'more people, more active, more often'.

“Usage of sports and leisure facilities across Orkney are showing an astonishing rate of growth when compared to last year. Use of the gym at the Dounby Centre has increased by 910% for example.

"The feedback on the scheme has been really positive but we're always looking for improvements where we can.

“One of the areas that needed work was our offer for our isles residents and we've developed ActiveIslands in response to that."

Prior to launching ActiveLife the total number of annual memberships for Orkney's sports and leisure facilities was less than 1700.

An initial target was set to get 19% of all households across Orkney to take out an Active Life membership.

As of 6 September the total memberships was 2521 (representing a total number of 5208 people) or 21% of all households.

If you consider people aged over 18 and on a Budget membership (currently 226) as an independent household in their own right - regardless of whether they still live at home or not - that takes the percentage of households involved in ActiveLife up to 23.66%.

For more information on the ActiveLife scheme visit the Pickaquoy Centre website.