THE largest health club group in the world, Fitness First, is facing tough discussions with its lenders as it moves close to breaching bank loan terms.

The gym chain, which employs 13,000 people and has 1.2 million members worldwide, is understood to be drawing up a turnaround strategy in a bid to persuade its banks to refinance its £550m debt burden.

But as it stands Fitness First, which has 430 clubs worldwide, including 140 in the UK, is currently set to breach banking convenant tests at the end of this month.

The chain’s owners, BC Partners, has fired the company’s top management team as part of an overhaul, including chief executive Colin Waggett, finance director Duncan Tatton-Brown and UK managing director John Gamble, it has been reported.

When the surveys for the manufacturing, construction and services sectors were combined, it pointed to the strongest growth since March.

Alan Clarke, an economist at Scotiabank, said the surprisingly strong growth “seriously puts the cat among the pigeons“ ahead of the Bank of England’s decision next week on whether to increase its quantitative easing programme.

It had been widely expected that the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) would increase its stock of quantitative easing from £275bn following its £75bn increase in October, but he said the latest surveys “massively reduce the urgency to deliver another big slug of asset purchases“.

He added: “The Bank of England will feel vindicated that extraordinary monetary policy easing – both here and by the European Central Bank – is having the desired effect on growth.

“The only question is whether that is maintained after the policy ease has ended. In light of the much stronger than expected CIPS surveys, coupled with increasingly robust survey indicators on the continent, there is a genuine risk that the MPC actually sits on its hands and does not increase its asset purchases any further at next week’s meeting.”