The challenge:
Leisure at Cheltenham serves a broad and diverse local community, and their fitness facility needed to reflect that. The brief wasn't simply to refresh the equipment or increase the floor space - it was to create a genuinely premium training environment that felt welcoming and accessible to every kind of member, including those with physical disabilities or additional accessibility requirements that standard gym design often fails to consider.
Accessibility in a fitness context is more complex than it might appear. It shapes layout decisions, equipment selection, the flow of the space, and the choices made at every stage of the design process. Getting it right required a partner who understood those demands and could bring the right products, knowledge, and design thinking to the conversation. Leisure at Cheltenham worked with Tom Alder at Origin to make that vision a reality.
The solution:
Tom Alder worked closely with the Leisure at Cheltenham team from the outset, taking time to understand the breadth of their membership and the specific accessibility requirements that needed to be built into the design from the start rather than added as an afterthought.
The layout was developed collaboratively to create a spacious, open environment where members of all abilities could move freely and train confidently. Wide circulation routes, considered equipment placement, and a clear, logical flow through the space were all central to the design, ensuring the facility worked as well for a first-time gym user or a member with a physical disability as it did for an experienced athlete.
The accessibility focus was validated in a meaningful way when Origin's brand ambassador and GB wheelchair basketball athlete Ben Fox visited the completed facility. The equipment Origin supplied closely matched what Ben uses in his own training, and his assessment of the space was clear: this is the kind of environment that makes a genuine difference for members with disabilities, with the quality and range of equipment on offer providing real motivation to keep coming back.
Origin managed the full delivery and installation, ensuring the facility was completed to spec and ready to serve the Cheltenham community from day one.
The outcome:
The completed facility gives Leisure at Cheltenham a training environment that lives up to the ambition of the original brief. The space is premium in feel, comprehensive in its equipment offering, and crucially, genuinely accessible in a way that goes beyond compliance and into genuine inclusion. Members across the full spectrum of the community can train here with confidence, in an environment that was designed with all of them in mind.
The accessibility dimension makes this project stand out within Origin's portfolio. Designing and equipping a facility that serves everyone equally requires a different kind of thinking at every stage, and it is exactly the kind of challenge Origin is built for. Tom Alder remains in contact with the Leisure at Cheltenham team, and we are proud to have played a part in creating a facility that the whole community can benefit from.
Take a walkthrough the finished site below:
Get in Touch
Every great facility starts somewhere. If you have a space with potential and a vision for what it could become, we'll help you get there - from design and equipment to installation and beyond. Get in touch and let's start that conversation.
