Sport England is offering all local authorities a free review of their customer-facing activity to enable them to raise their game when it comes to tackling inequality

Every local authority in England is to qualify for a free review from Sport England as part of its Moving Communities initiative.

Moving Communities was set up to help local authority physical activity operators provide opportunities to people and communities that have traditionally been left behind and excluded from physical activity, such as those from lower socio-economic groups, culturally-diverse communities, disabled people and people with long-term health conditions.

About the review
The initiative – called the Quest Foundation Review, or QFR – will provide operators with scored and benchmarked KPIs and insights to reveal the way these customers perceive the tone with which operators address them, with the aim of making services more welcoming and improving participation rates from these groups.

The QFR process has been developed to enable Quest to view the facility and its services from a customer’s perspective, focusing on how people experience and interact with their local leisure services, by assessing their websites, checking on how they conduct phone calls and examining their social media feeds.

Researchers will capture assessor comments and feedback, based on how the facility and its online services were perceived during one specific call and one visit each to the website and social media feeds.

The review feedback will be delivered to operators as part of Quest, Sport England’s national quality scheme. Kevin Mills, director of capital investment at Sport England says: “QFR will assess a facility from each local authority every 12 months, to identify best practice and support continuous improvement for individual sites and the sector as a whole.

“The completed QFRs will support the commitment made by Sport England to help the sector in its recovery from the pandemic and to tackle inequalities as part of its 10-year Uniting the Movement strategy, by removing barriers to activity.

“The goal is to help every person in every community have the opportunity to get active.”

Monitoring continuous improvement
The QFR will be embedded in the Continuous Improvement ‘pillar’ of the Moving Communities programme – which is managed for Sport England by consultancy, 4 Global. This tracks people’s participation at public leisure facilities, and seeks to provide evidence of the physical activity sector’s performance, sustainability and social value.

Sarah Maxwell, head of external accreditations at Right Directions, which manages Quest on behalf of Sport England, explains: “For the first time since its inception in 1996, Quest will offer a free service to every local authority across England.

“Launching in April and running for three years, QFR will identify how the sector is performing and use that data to create awareness of inequalities, while shaping training and education to help enhance and improve services.”

More: www.questaward.org