Sport England’s continuous improvement tool, Quest, is being updated for 2026 with two new products to simplify the process – Quest for Facilities for individual sites and Quest Active Wellbeing for contracts or places.

First established more than 20 years ago, Quest defines industry standards and best practice, providing a benchmark for quality and improvement and was previously only aimed at the management of facilities.

The improvements are in response to operator feedback and include limiting the assessment to one day, giving clearer mystery visit questions and greater recognition of community wellbeing outcomes. 

Caroline Constantine, MD of Right Directions which administers Quest, says: “We've spent the last six months developing an enhanced Quest that's more streamlined, flexible and user-friendly, while maintaining the detail and insight that makes it so valuable.

“From January 2026, Quest for Facilities will continue as the sector’s benchmark for quality, but as a one-day face-to-face assessment of a single facility and its service delivery, alongside a mystery visit. 

“Quest for Active Wellbeing will replace the current Active Communities assessment, focussing on the whole contract or community to demonstrate local impact.”

Quest for Facilities identifies strengths as well as areas for development under six themes: continuous improvement, empowering the team, driving participation, customer delivery and insights, operational and environmental management and compliance declaration.

The mystery visit includes an in-person site visit and website review, in addition to phone calls, emails and social media enquiries, with a focus on operational standards such as cleanliness, safety and maintenance.

The customer experience, including the welcome, professionalism, booking clarity, accessibility, signage and communication is also rated, alongside programming and inclusion for underrepresented groups.

The Quest Active Wellbeing assessment is completed face-to-face in one day, following Quest’s 'plan, do, measure, monitor and review', impact framework.

Teams deliver a presentation on the value and impact of their work and reviewers explore six areas: purpose, strategy and place; people and workforce; insight, data and evaluation; partnerships and system working; delivery, access and inclusion; and wellbeing, impact and sustainability.

Sarah Lobo, head of external accreditations at Right Directions, says: “Quest Active Wellbeing is ideal for teams in facilities, community development, wellbeing hubs or outreach services.

"The assessment demonstrates the value of their work, identify opportunities for improvement and showcases their contribution to health, equity and social impact, strengthening the team’s effectiveness, accountability and ability to attract investment or support.”

Right Directions is also launching the Quest Place Score in spring 2026, which will combine the assessment results of Quest for Facilities and Quest Active Wellbeing to offer a place-based view of performance to track local trends and strategic planning.

Founder of Collins Associates, Cliff Collins, thinks the changes will make the standard more user-friendly: “Having an objective, independent review of how a facility is performing against agreed criteria is clearly a good thing. However, part of the art of any certification scheme lies in its relevance. The proposed changes to the assessment process should help in part – particularly if the earlier onus on statutory requirements is to be managed by a self-declaration. 

“Keeping down the administrative burden for operators of facilities is crucial," said Collins. "Many previous changes to Quest have added more requirements, but the challenge is also to take out the irrelevant, so the remaining scheme has a very clear focus. Taking up Quest is voluntary, so it needs a compelling story of measurable successes to make operators of facilities interested to take part.

“With the updated European standard for fitness now active in the UK – due to the British Standards Insitute being a member of the European Standardisation Committee that managed the process for EN 17229:2025 – Quest should now move to ensuring that facilities also align with this standard,” said Collins.

About Quest

Quest forms part of Sport England’s Moving Communities, which was set up in 2021 to provide data and insights across the sport and leisure sector to help decision-makers maximise the impact of investment in physical activity.

The entire Quest system will now be integrated into the 4Global Moving Communities dashboard to enable wider industry benchmarking, as well as sitting within Right Directions' RD-Dash Reporting and Benchmarking platform, where organisations and their teams can analyse and benchmark their own Quest data against others in their estate, as well as national averages.