Sevenoaks Leisure Centre has passed a tough assessment by Sport England’s leading national quality scheme, Quest, demonstrating it has robust Covid-19 control measures in place for both customers and staff.
Quest is the best-known improvement programme within the leisure industry and its rigorous assessments challenge even the very best leisure centres in the UK. The new assessment, Quest Prime, has been set up in response to the current climate, helping leisure centres to prove they have sufficient processes and procedures in place to minimise the risk of transmission of Covid-19 within their buildings.
In order to achieve Quest Prime, Sevenoaks Leisure Centre underwent an assessment by an external assessor across core areas of pandemic management, as well as a mystery visit.
Ranking highly in several areas including community engagement, cleanliness, hygiene, and the “customer journey”, Quest assessors ranked the facility as “very good” overall and “excellent” in team management.
“Achieving this qualification is welcome recognition of our staff’s hard work and dedication through a difficult time” said Karren Halil, Centre Manager. “Our customers can have assurance of our ability to provide fun, inclusive and effective leisure facilities.”
Quest’s Operations Director, Caroline Constantine, said: “By meeting Quest Prime’s high standards, Sevenoaks Leisure Centre has shown its commitment to reduce the risk of virus transmission through robust control measures, giving both the staff and customers confidence. Like all Quest assessments, the standards for Quest Prime are demanding and challenging for the management team and staff, and it is an achievement to succeed in Quest at any level. In these unprecedented times it is more important than ever that local leisure facilities can demonstrate their safety procedures and the value they bring to the local community, and Quest helps them do just that.”
Sencio Community Leisure chief executive, Jane Parish, said: “After the seismic events and challenges for the entire leisure sector over the past 18 months, I am thrilled for our staff that their hard work in such difficult circumstances has been recognised and rated so highly by an industry leading accreditation scheme.
“Of course, we don’t always get things right, but this is an independent assessment of just how well we have done during an incredibly difficult period.”
Editor’s notes:
- Sevenoaks Leisure Centre is one of three leisure centers managed by Sevenoaks Leisure Limited (operating as Sencio Community Leisure). Sencio Community Leisure is a non-profit organization serving local communities across Kent. We are dedicated to providing fun and inclusive sports facilities to our local communities and our core values are that we are PASSIONATE, PROFESSIONAL and COMMITTED.
- Quest is the UK Quality Scheme for Sport and Leisure. Managed on behalf of Sport England by Right Directions, 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. questnbs.org
