The ‘Mixed Economy’ of Leisure: The Historical Background to the Development of the Commercial, Voluntary and Public Sectors of the Leisure Industries

The purpose of this chapter is to situate our discussion of the nature and significance of management and planning in the leisure industries by highlighting the context within which the leisure industries and leisure policy have developed. An historical perspective is important for three reasons. First, in respect of the public sector, many of the contemporary facilities, which account for a large proportion of local government current expenditure, are products of decisions taken in the nineteenth century — for example, many urban parks, museums, swimming baths and libraries date from the 1870s–1890s. Such provision, and the inherited financial commitments often lead to ‘facility inertia’, reducing the capacity to develop new provision. Secondly, such facilities represent a ‘philosophical legacy’, or conventional wisdom, concerning the appropriate divisions between the public, voluntary and commercial sectors. These attitudes are currently coming under close scrutiny as proposals for ‘compulsory competitive tendering’ for the management of public sector leisure provision raise fundamental questions about their appropriateness.