Greater Manchester sporting fraternity unites in Quest for success
Ten sporting organisations in Greater Manchester – including the County Sports Partnership and the Football Association – have collectively completed a tough assessment by Sport England’s leading quality scheme, Quest.
Set up last year, the Greater Manchester Quest Consortium is made up of GreaterSport, the region’s CSP, plus Manchester County FA, four local authorities and four leisure trusts. It is the first time multiple organisations have worked collaboratively on the Quest improvement and quality assurance process.
The process, which lasted 17 months, began with a joint planning and preparation day. Each partner then completed an individual Quest for Active Communities assessment – aimed at organisations involved in sports development – before finally participating in a group benchmarking workshop.
Five of the partners completed the two-day Quest Plus assessment and five completed the one-day Quest Entry assessment. GreaterSport played an advisory role throughout, and the same assessor conducted all 10 assessments to ensure consistency across the results.
Key aims of the initiative included raising standards through continuous improvement and offering reassurance to customers and commissioners through accreditation, as well as further driving improvement by sharing best practice, innovation and expertise.
Matt Johnson, deputy CEO of GreaterSport, said: “Historically, the Greater Manchester sporting fraternity has a positive track record of working together, which is why we felt a collaborative approach to Quest could really add value.
“In an era where localism is becoming key, especially with Greater Manchester’s first mayoral election coming up next May, it is important that the main delivery agents are accredited in order to reassure both future customers and commissioners. At the same time, this was a real opportunity for us and our partners not only to self-assess and gain the benefit of external assessment, but also to obtain the views of our peers.
“All the partners embraced the experience, and the process highlighted both some real strengths and common areas for improvement. The group now intends to continue working together with a view to cascading good practice, replicating what works and improving our collective marketing and insight capability.”
Paul Brivio, head of Quest for Active Communities, said: “The Greater Manchester Quest Consortium is a real trailblazer, amply demonstrating how much can be achieved when organisations take a joined-up approach.
“This is a great example of the Government and Sport England’s ‘place-shaping’ agenda in action, and the model has been so successful that we now plan to roll out it out to other cities and regions, from London to Birmingham.”
The complete list of the Greater Manchester Quest Consortium partners, together with the category of assessment they completed, are:
GreaterSport (Quest Plus)
Chorley Council Community Team (Quest Plus)
Life Leisure Sports Development, Stockport (Quest Plus)
Oldham Sports Development (Quest Entry)
Sport and Physical Activity Service, Bury (Quest Plus)
Active Education Sports Development, Tameside (Quest Entry)
Sport and Active Living, Bolton (Quest Plus)
Inspiring Healthy Lifestyles (Quest Entry)
Salford Community Leisure (Quest Entry)
Manchester County FA (Quest Entry)
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For further information contact:
Rhianon Howells at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 01843 600610
Mob: 07967 551142
Email: rhianon@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk
Editor’s notes:
Quest is the UK Quality Scheme for Sport and Leisure. It is a tool for continuous improvement, designed primarily for the management of leisure facilities and leisure development. Quest defines industry standards and good practice and encourages their ongoing development and delivery within a customer focused management framework.
The National Benchmarking Service (NBS) provides critical data on the performance of your leisure facility. Leisure-net Solutions, in partnership with Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) at Sheffield Hallam University, work on behalf of Sport England to provide a seamless, rigorous and valuable collection and analysis of participation, financial and customer satisfaction data. For more information, visit questnbs.org.
