West Lindsey District Council chooses Toplevel BookingOffice

To mark the launch of the new services, the District Council is offering great prizes for the first members of the public who use them.

Visitors to www.west-lindsey.gov.uk/roses or www.west-lindsey.gov.uk/marshalls can check the availability of sports pitches or book a function or meeting room.

And customers who want to book sports courts at the Wolds Leisure sites at Market Rasen’s De Aston and Caistor venues can click on to www.west-lindsey.gov.uk/deaston or www.west-lindsey.gov.uk/caistor.

The first internet sports booker at either the Gainsborough or Wolds Leisure sites will get £35 off the cost.

Chairman of the Community Committee, Councilor Trevor Young said: “The internet is an integral part of life for many and I am delighted we are now able to offer people the facility to book to use our sports services from where ever and almost whenever they can.”

The usual booking services will run alongside the new on-line facilities. Staff will be on hand to deal with bookings for Roses and Marshalls sports grounds on (01427) 676622 or 676619, for Wolds Leisure at De Aston on (01673) 842695 and for Wolds Leisure Caistor on (01472) 852404.

Councilor Kristan Smith is the Council’s IT champion, and he is delighted that the Council has been able to find a cost-effective way of offering on-line booking services to customers.

He said: “We are a small authority yet we needed a system to meet our unique needs. We had three options. We could have developed our own bespoke system but this has the problems that come when key staff leave and on-going support and maintenance is needed. We also considered buying a full leisure management system but for a small Council we felt the cost was too high."

“We found the answer in the third option – to buy an application that had been created specially for browser-based management of booking for sports and leisure. We did a costing and Toplevel BookingOffice won hands down. In fact, the price difference was so great that we could afford to integrate it with our existing e-payments facility and have it designed to look and feel just like the rest of our website so the public, moving from our main site to the new booking system, will not notice the difference.”

Jane Roberts, Sales Director at Toplevel commented: “We are delighted that BookingOffice has provided such a neat, cost-effective solution for West Lindsey District Council, and we look forward to helping them develop their online services in the future.”