The Leisure Review: news in brief

Edition 75; dateline 6 September 2013

Surprise, surprise says Vicky
StreetGames project Us Girls has won the National Lottery Award for best sports project in 2013 with the Manchester-based project team amazed and delighted to be surprised by with the award by Olympic legend and double medal-winning cyclist, Victoria Pendleton. Accepting the award and the £2,000 cheque which accompanied it, Karen Keohane, national programme manager of Us Girls and a friend of The Leisure Review, said: “It means a lot for Us Girls to be recognised by the National Lottery and to be honoured by an Olympic legend like Victoria. As a successful British sportswoman, she is a great inspiration to the young women and volunteers we work with every day. The aim of Us Girls is to help young women in disadvantaged communities play sport, make friends and above all have fun and with this award from the National Lottery, we can continue to do this.”

Revamped swim scheme to launch at LIW
STA is re-launching its International Learn to Swim Programme (ILSP) in September 2013 with an exciting range of new award certificates for children progressing through the scheme. The new format, which will be officially unveiled at Leisure Industry Week, will retain the “same loveable characters” from the current ILSP scheme but will also incorporate a modern colourful twist that makes them age-appropriate and visually appealing at each stage of the programme. STA has also added the learning outcomes on each the certificates to help teachers and parents clarify what a learner has achieved. STA’s ILSP has successfully helped millions of children across the globe learn to swim and the improved scheme is flexible for different teaching pool environments and aims to build on knowledge and skill development at each level, rewarding achievement through a range of new certificate and sticker designs.

Leading Learning: influencing, advocating and recruiting
The NCF Leading Learning Programme is presenting a masterclass on the subject of influencing and advocacy on 18 October 2013. Located in central London, this masterclass will provide delegates with an enhanced ability to influence, be an effective advocate, and have a lasting and positive impact on people around them. Course leaders Steve Wood and Graham Wyles promise "a fusion of coaching, NLP, theatre, performance and improvisation, and knowledge of best practice from years of experience and research". The Leading Learning Programme will also shortly be launching recruitment details for the 2014 programme. For full details of the masterclass event or to express your interest in the 2014 programme visit them online at www.ncfleadinglearning.co.uk or contact programme director Sue Isherwood at leadership@cloa.org.uk

Smooth operators win award
DC Leisure has been awarded the leisure centre operator of the year award by UK Active, whom readers may still think of as the FIA. Given for excellence within the leisure management sector, the award is assessed independently and DC Leisure has now won it four times. Steve Philpott, chief executive of the company which recently declared itself to be a social enterprise and is now marketing itself as a purveyor of health and wellbeing, said; “We are extremely pleased to accept the award for operator of the year 2013 which we believe recognises our success in achieving outstanding operating standards and our commitment to delivering an unmatched customer experience for each and every user.” The DC Leisure group records 25 million visits each year.

Quest approval for STA scheme
Inspire Leisure have had their foresight in adopting STAadmin.co.uk rewarded with Quest recognising the trust’s administrative systems as an example of good practice. The programme helps with managing and tracking operational safety, compliance, pool water quality, staff training and qualifications. During a recent routine assessment at Inspire’s Littlehampton facility, the assessor highlighted STA’s online leisure management system as an “assessment strength”. The report reckoned that “the introduction of this new software based training and monitoring database to handle lifeguard records and performance is an example of good practice”. John Stride of Inspire Leisure, was naturally cock-a-hoop: “We work diligently to maintain and progress quality standards and STAadmin.co.uk has given us the technology to facilitate this and demonstrate best practice and compliance with the latest regulations.”