Brigid Simmonds "We're really glad to have you with us. Maybe now the ladies' toilets will improve" said a director of Leicester City Football Club when lifelong fan Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of Business In Sport And Leisure (BISL), chair of the Sport England Lottery Panel and director of the Central Council For Physical Recreation, was appointed to the board in February this year. A man oblivious, clearly, to the achievements of this feisty former Army officer who has about-faced the role of women in leisure by positioning herself at the forefront of the industry's drive to request, nay demand, the attention of local and national government. Simmonds gives the impression of a woman who would never actually smash the glass ceiling, but would rather etch in it a neat, round hole large enough to slip comfortably through. From her well-ordered home office in the front room of an enormous mansion apartment in a leafy south-west London suburb, she runs her business life with a headmistress-like efficiency which belies a warm, non-feminist stance. "I didn't realise quite how male-dominated the leisure industry was when first joined" she says. "I believe, like Paul Boateng, that you should be picked because you're good and not because of your sex or race - that's the way this government, which is keen on equity, works. But I think there's a great advantage in being female." Juggling such high-level industry responsibilities with bringing up three children under 12 is not for the faint-hearted. Simmonds made it clear to BISL chair John Brackenbury when she took on the CEO role in 1991 that she would need the board to adopt a flexible approach to her working hours. Brackenbury agreed at once, recognising that how things are achieved is more important then when they are. The result has been 10 years of successfully challenging government at all levels on issues including the national minimum wage - "the unions were calling for £6, but we said that would be out of the question for many of our members and we convinced them that it should be more realistic" - and Sunday dancing. Says Simmonds, "that issue took six years, two deregulation orders, a private members bill and a party at the Dome on New Year's Eve, but we got there!". Born and brought up in Leicestershire the daughter of a clergyman, Brigid Simmonds boarded at St. Margaret's School in Bushey where she played lacrosse and tennis for the school. She subsequently attended the WRAC college at Camberley, and in 1978 began an 8 year short-service commission in the Army, reaching the rank of Captain. She served a two-year stint with an all-male artillery regiment in Germany and a further two years in Hong Kong where she met her husband, a naval officer. Following a spell in the Army's PR directorate in London, she joined architects Sargant and Potiriadis in 1986 as head of marketing, until John Brackenbury brought her in to spearhead the new BISL organisation. Industry sage John Conlan, then boss of First Leisure, gave Simmonds, along with a wealth of support, an office at the company. "Working at the head office of a PLC gave me a good insight into how the business side of the industry worked" she says, citing Conlan's development head at bar operator Urbium, Alison Anderson, as one of those who helped her most in the early days. Conlan says "Brigid has been the real driving force behind BISL. Without her determination and sheer hard work, the organisation would have floundered in the early days. Together with John Brackenbury, she has built the leisure sector's most successful and respected representative body." "BISL is, essentially, a lobby group, but also a forum, inasmuch as we disseminate information that comes out of government" Simmonds says. "We're not an alternative to a trade association, but we add value." BISL has a memorandum of agreement with both the British Hospitality Association and the British Beer & Pub Association. "In some areas, one organisation will take the lead - for example, BISL always deals with gambling and planning and property issues - but there is a lot of crossover with organisations like BEDA and the FIA." Simmonds stresses that BISL works across the width of government, dealing directly with the No. 10 policy unit and cabinet office, not just the department responsible for a particular piece of legislation. The organisation is currently concentrating on five areas - gambling law reform, liquor licensing reform, employment law, planning and property and sport. Each division has a working group, chaired by a director of BISL, which meets quarterly, produces policy papers and responds to government consultations. Current projects include liquor licensing deregulation, gambling law reform and planning guidance, to promote best practice in planning for tourism and leisure. "We want to make local authorities more positive towards leisure in their planning policies. We're also interested in allowing people to work a longer week than 48 hours, if they wish - you're affecting the viability of many leisure businesses if you force employees to work fixed hours. We're in favour of giving people the choice of working when they want to - but it must be on a fair wage." With BISL membership open to all, including lawyers, accountants, leisure consultancies and surveyors, Simmonds likes to view it as "the voice of the commercial leisure industry. We have the advantage that most of our members are very senior and are prepared to make decisions for the good of the industry, not just because it's good for their company." She unashamedly solicits a plug for their annual conference, in London on 20th November 2002. 350 delegates will attend to hear keynote addresses by Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Tessa Jowell and Brian Stewart, chair of Scottish and Newcastle. As a Council member of Sport England, the non-departmental public body formerly known as the Sports Council, and chair of its Lottery Panel, Simmonds is responsible for distributing £180 million a year to sport from the National Lottery - "it was £250 million before Camelot started under-performing!" "My interests lie in community sports at the grass roots and we're years behind in this country" she says. "We need to spend millions on local authority facilities, especially as the government now realises that sport can play a part in the health of the nation and in driving up education standards and law and order. Even the most disadvantaged can develop through sport." "With sport funding demand far outstripping supply, we're stuck with the treasury's directions in dealing with what is quasi-public money, to ensures you have properly analysed the risk. 75% of our money goes to small, local community projects." she says. I tentatively mention the leviathan that is Wembley - Simmonds was a witness to the select committee investigating the funding of the national stadium project. "It was very difficult" she says, "but I firmly believe we need a national stadium and that it should be at Wembley. 74% of money invested in the Stade de France was public money - in the UK, it was 24%. It's never easy to fund projects of £500 million or so, but we're near to getting funding for Wembley, and will hopefully include athletics and rugby league there. "I'm sympathetic to the Birmingham bid, but many sports are only interested in staging in London and the cost per seat to construct Wembley will be similar to Cardiff. If we are to create a wonder of the modern world, it must have the right amount of money spent on it." "Everything I do is complementary" Simmonds says of her plurality. "My Sport England work gives me access to the DCMS, which now also has responsibility for gambling and liquor licensing which BISL deals with. Richard Caborn, the Minister for Sport, is also in charge of gambling and Tessa Jowell's in charge of everything!" She has set herself three tasks in relation to change at the Lottery Fund - to make form-filling easier, to fund more cross-distributor projects, like village halls that can be used for the arts and sport and to look at monitoring of projects completed and their effect. "We're contributing £165 million towards the Commonwealth Games" she says of next month's international jog-fest in Manchester. "We're creating and enhancing facilities that people can use for years afterwards, like SportCity and the Aquatics Centre. It's a prestigious international event and I'm confident it'll be hugely successful." Failure is not a word one would associate with the vibrancy that is Brigid Simmonds, but she confesses to frustration at BISL's difficulties in getting the pub and nightclub industries to work together. "We try to bring the two sides together. The problems may resolve themselves, but we always put forward both positions if we can't get agreement." But what of Leicester City FC and their descent from Premiership glamour fixtures with Manchester United and Chelsea into the depths of next season's Nationwide League matches against the likes of Rotherham and Walsall? "Er, they'd already gone down by the time I was appointed to the board" she says quickly, "it's nothing to do with me!" It strikes me that, once she gets her studs stuck firmly into the turf at the new Walkers Stadium, Micky Adams and the lads had better shape up - Brigid Simmonds may be about to make it something to do with her! Brackenbury on Brigid "We have worked together brilliantly over the past ten years. She is a real self-starter - I don't have to keep chasing her, you only have to ask and it's done. She's open, honest, upfront and very professional, which is why she is so respected by everyone."