grassroots
Quest for success
As Oxford City Council achieves Excellent in Quest for Active Communities, it credits the scheme with helping to turn around its sport and leisure provision.
OXFORD City Council has become the first local authority in the country to receive an Excellent rating in Quest for Active Communities, the new assessment model from Quest, Sport England’s quality scheme for sport and leisure – not bad for a council whose sport and leisure provision was rated poor by the Audit Commission just eight years ago. The new assessment model supports the
priorities outlined in both Sport England’s strategy ‘Towards an Active Nation’ and the government’s ‘Sporting Future’ strategy, including physical health, mental wellbeing, individual development, social/community development and economic development. “With less central funding available we are
operating in an ever-more challenging environment and, in order to attract external investment, the need to make a strong case for sport and leisure is imperative. Quest helps us to do that by enabling us to demonstrate our impact in a way that is quality-assured, as well as allowing us to benchmark ourselves effectively against others
Durham, East Riding, Birmingham and Kent,” says Lewisman. In 2009, Barton Leisure Centre became the
first Oxford City Council site to go through Quest Facility Management (now Quest for Facilities) assessment, and the following year the council’s in-house sport development team achieved Quest Sport Development accreditation. Also in 2009, the council appointed Fusion Lifestyle as its leisure management operator, with a commitment to Quest included in its conditions of contract. Today, in addition to the Active Communities
in the industry,” says Ian Brooke, head of community services at Oxford City Council. When Oxford City Council first signed up to
Quest, its sport and leisure provision was failing. “Our services were rated poor by the Audit
Commission, and the service being delivered to our customers and residents fell way below acceptable standards. We were unable to demonstrate key outcomes or the impact of the services we delivered; there was no strategic direction; we were working in isolation with no key partners, such as Sport England or NGBs; and customer satisfaction was at an all-time low, with numerous complaints,” says Hagan Lewisman, the council’s active communities manager.
A positive step-change “We knew embedding an ethos of continuous improvement was integral to being able to better demonstrate outcomes and impact. The Quest process really helped us look outward, driving us to benchmark and seek best practice. We gained insight from talking to the assessors as well as to other high-performing sports and leisure teams, such as Westminster,
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award, all three of the council’s leisure centres have Quest accreditation, one with an Excellent rating, one with Very Good and one with Good. An ice rink and outdoor pool managed by the council are also Quest-accredited.
Community focus Quest’s decision to replace the Sport Development assessment with a new Active Communities model neatly dovetailed with changes the council was implementing. This
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