The centre was rated 'Very Good' in Sport England’s leading quality scheme
Ravelin Sports Centre has won numerous awards for the construction and design of the building, making it a world-class facility recognised by the International Olympic Committee, the Civic Trust and more locally the Portsmouth Society. While we were awarded the BUCS Physical Activity Excellence award in 2023, nothing really looked into how Ravelin Sports Centre runs as a whole. That is, until Quest came along.
Quest is a continuous improvement tool for leisure facilities recommended by Sport England. The scheme measures how well a facility is operating and how effective we are across a range of topics. The Quest award was established over 20 years ago and is a nationally extremely well-respected award. The scheme evolves year on year with the ever-changing pace of the sport and leisure industry. Ensuring we keep up with industry best practice.
Alongside Quest, the team at Right Directions has worked alongside ukactive to produce The Active Standard, which is a baseline accreditation for ukactive members. Member operators will be required to register their facilities for them to be assessed on a quality scale. Acknowledging the different levels of knowledge and experience across the sector, some organisations will be able to evidence how they already comply, while others will be supported to work towards achieving accreditation to The Active Standard.
The Active Standard is a quality mark for the physical activity sector, developed by ukactive and independently assessed, demonstrating our commitment to provide facilities that are safe, inclusive and compliant. As we continuously improve our services, you can be confident we will maintain the high standards you expect. The Active Standard supports leisure facilities in the public and private sectors to demonstrate effective compliance with the law and other formal requirements, helping to strengthen resilience to reputational and operational risk and contributing to safer participation for consumers.
I am absolutely thrilled that we have achieved a ‘Very Good’ Quest score and The Active Standard across our facilities, activities and services. The whole team work so hard to deliver an excellent customer experience on every visit, and to get the recognition that we do is a fantastic achievement.
A lot of hard work went into the preparation of the assessment from team members across the business, as well as through colleagues across the university. It really has been a collaborative effort, and a long time coming.
It makes me proud that we can now confidently say that our activities and services match the quality the building has been recognised for.
Rated 'Very Good'
We’re delighted to announce that we have achieved a score of Very Good in our inaugural assessment. The two-day assessment was supplemented by a mystery visit covering the following areas:
- Compliance
- Health and Safety
- Customer Journey
- Operational Management
- Environmental Management
- Managing the Team
- Planning to improve
- Climbing
- Fitness suites (including the gym and fitness classes)
- Pool Water Quality
- Tackling Inequalities
Alongside achieving Very Good in Quest, The Active Standard has also been awarded to Ravelin Sports Centre, outlining our commitment to you to deliver excellence and exceed industry best practice. Sport England and ukActive accredited facilities and activities, the UK’s most sustainable sports centre and a friendly, welcoming team. What more could you want?
We recognise that we’re not perfect, and in the interest of continuous improvement, we’re aiming to improve in our next assessment with the top score of Excellent in our sights.
Positive areas mentioned in the report include:
- Cleanliness across the whole site was excellent, with very limited areas for improvement.
- Overall, this facility is one of the most modern and impressive facilities I have ever been to. The building certainly has a wow factor when you first arrive, and this continues throughout the facilities, which, when you see each area, are finished to an incredible standard that gives the whole facility a premium feel.
- The facility appeared to offer a fantastic range of activities for all parts of the local community.
- Every team member I spoke with during the visit came across positively. They were keen to assist and appeared to be happy undertaking their job roles.
- The range of Technogym equipment in the fitness suite was outstanding, and one of the best I have ever seen. This included top-of-the-range cardio and resistance machines, free weights, plate-loaded equipment, functional rig and accessories, and multiple squat racks.
- The NPS has improved from 37 in 2023 to 53 in 2025. Adding to this, the fact that footfall has grown significantly highlights that the service is doing something right to keep members and attract new ones.
- The weekly customer newsletters were an excellent example of how to keep customers in the loop with important information, in a format that was easy to access from anywhere.
- There is a clear focus in the research that students who are engaged in sport and recreation activities are 5% less likely to drop out of university and are also 23% more likely to obtain a better grade. For this reason, the fitness membership scheme is not just commercially driven for the sports facility, but also for the university as a whole.
- However, the most impressive statistics were that 50% of the workforce were either university graduates or current students, 30% of management were graduates, and 92% of the 464-strong volunteer team were current students.
- The building was designed with a phenomenal amount of examples of best practice concerning sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint, including being run fully on electricity and reusing pool water for toilet flushing. The fact that the building can boast to be the most sustainable leisure facility in the UK has a significant impact to support the local and wider net zero strategies.
Improvement areas:
- When calling the facility, I was unable to get through to a team member on some occasions.
- Social media outlets being advertised for the facility appeared to all fall under the ‘UOP Sport and Recreation page’. There was a lot of content posted; however, not a huge amount that was specific to the leisure facility.
- I couldn't see any timetables for the swimming pool or group exercise programmes displayed within the facility.
- Implementing a mystery visit programme could provide very useful information on how the team are performing against the standards expected, and provide the ability to test this frequently to maintain standards.
- The website could be used as a tool to showcase a number of case studies or testimonials of students and non-student members who have benefited from using the facilities. This might help generate positive awareness of what being a member of the club or a sports team can do for your mental health, grades and employability.
- To enhance the succession planning process to retain staff in key roles.
- The challenge for the team now is to look for ways to continually reduce their carbon footprint via an ongoing green action plan, and therefore, the team might wish to consider creating a sustainability section within the new service delivery plan.
The above improvement areas and positive elements are a small snippet of the report, which we will be working through over the coming months. The next steps for us will be to work through each of the recommendations and implement them throughout the year, and build on these to ensure services, processes, and activities deliver the excellence you deserve. We will be reassessed next July.
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